Book review : The Man from Pare Pare

Presidential memoirs are not exactly on the list of endangered species. A recent visit to a local bookstore chain resulted in no less than 50 titles, dominated by the Soeharto presidency. With this kind of competition, one might wonder if there is a place for one biography of the "accidental president", B.J. Habibie.

Surprisingly (or not ?) , his 512 days in office has so far proved to be less than popular, as measured by the number of books about it. The president himself penned the notable "Detik Detik yang Menentukan" in late 2005, a book which was well received. To latest addition to this slim compendium so far is written by A. Makmur Makka, a former aide.

Reading this work, one feels as if one is watching the "coming soon" clips while waiting for the main feature in a cinema. One only gets to see glimpses , not details. Unfortunately, the clip can't help since the movie is less than watchable.

This memoir appear to be targeted at archivists (did I see anybody raising their hands ?) who may have lost plenty of official documents. For that is surely one's perception , since a majority of this work is a list of government policies and statistics. This is rather surprising, considering memoirs are supposed to give the readers an insight into the subject's thoughts and personalities.

The author skims through arguably most of the subject's life (also a surprising choice, considering a memoir is commonly used to share the subject's life, from childhood onwards). Not too many new , previously unknown details emerged.

More critical reviewers (in case readers have not noticed, your correspondent is not one of them) is likely to judge this work as a mea culpa. Plenty of pages are devoted to the objectives, background and benefits of why Indonesia had to be able to produce the CN-235 and the N-250. Practically no airspace was allocated to why the precious state budget should not have been spent building more bridges, paying higher salaries for teachers and professors or others of that ilk.

In the end, this book tells something else about us as a nation. Our leaders' memoirs focus on what they did while they were in power. It unwittingly gives away the conclusion that after reaching the top, our leaders are not doing anything useful. In your correspondent's view, they should consider devoting their time for the improvement of Indonesia's situation. In this, your correspondent applauds President Habibie's Centre who is consistently pleading the case for democracy and human rights in Indonesia.

(The book is "The True Life of Habibie: Cerita di balik kesuksesan", A. Makmur Makka, IMAN 2008)