by Sharif Horthy
I am writing in the peaceful atmosphere of Ibu Rahayu's home near Jakarta, having just returned from a fact-finding trip to the five places that were proposed for the 2001 World Congress. With Pak Muninjaya (ISC chair) and Pak Kuswanda (Indonesian councillor kejiwaan) we went to Cipanas, Yogyakarta, Semarang, Denpasar and Palangkaraya at the request of the committee who are preparing the short list, so that the meeting of the World Subud Council (WSC) in June can make the final choice.
If you have been following the stories in the press, you are probably surprised at our bravery, travelling through a country on the brink of rebellion and civil war. Luckily, this version of how things are in Indonesia is, for the moment at least, a fiction of the media. Our journey was safe, if fairly arduous, and the communities we stayed in were peaceful. I heard that the level of crime is rising with increasing unemployment, but I would guess that it is still below the level of many large cities in Europe and North America. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Indonesia's economic collapse is not very serious. But my impression from walking around and talking to people is not of a country on the brink of revolution, but in a state of shock. There is a surreal feeling about Indonesia today that reminds one of one of those cartoon characters who run off the edge of the cliff and pause for a moment as it dawns on them that they are about to fall. Whether the fall, when it comes, will be destructive or more like a therapeutic bounce now largely depends on the government - whether it is willing quickly to take the steps needed to restore confidence. So far the signs are not encouraging. Most large companies are bankrupt due to their dollar borrowings, as are most if not all domestic banks, so business - other than the small local variety - has come to a virtual standstill. Even export industries are closing down for lack of imported materials, spare parts and finance. Meanwhile the government fudges and prevaricates.
There are still subsidies on essential foodstuffs, but the lives
of most people are now very hard. All the Subud members I talked
to were calm and confident. They seem to survive thanks to their
sense of prihatin, the strong human support systems in their society,
and their amazing sense of humour. This is the one area where
the government is constantly supportive, providing daily material
for endless jokes and parodies. As most of you know, the effect
of all this on PT S.Widjojo, the Jakarta developer owned by many
Subud members, has been catastrophic. After years of hesitation,
its bid for growth could not have come at a worse time. With a
view to increasing the value of its site, it acquired an adjacent
strip of land with a dollar loan from a local bank. With its rental
income drastically reduced, it is no longer able to service the
loan, which has now been called by the bank. The challenge for
S.Widjojo is to reach some sort of compromise with the lenders,
who are themselves in trouble.
The impact of all this on the Subud community is that S.Widjojo's annual contribution to the international budget, which was halved last year, will disappear completely this year. This means that, as things are today, we cannot count on any enterprise contribution to our international budget. Like Indonesia's financial crisis, our Subud one may have a therapeutic side. In fact, I prefer to see it as an opportunity, not a calamity, because I hope that it will force our Subud community to re-examine the way its organisation works, what it does and how it is funded. The fact is that since the time S.Widjojo and one or two other enterprises started supporting the WSA budget, the 'international' contribution from Subud members via their national committees has dwindled till it is now somewhere around $80,000, a mere $7 per head per annum. Now that the enterprise support has gone away again, what should this 'member' contribution be, and how should it be distributed between the Subud countries? We have been discussing this question on the WSC list-server in the run- up to the Bali meeting. There are all sorts of abstruse ways of looking at it, like weighting our membership with each country's GDP per head, etc., but Zone 4 chair, Michael Sold, came up with a simple approach
which appears to me quite sound. He said 'just one cup of coffee a day' which he translates into $30 a year per head from all our members in the wealthier countries of the world and $3 per head in the poorer countries.
Our 'official' membership in the wealthier countries is about 8,000 so this would translate into $240,000. I assume we won't see much of the $3's at the international level - though the less well-off countries should probably contribute something. Andrew Bromley, chairperson of Subud UK (who has already agreed to try and meet the $30 per head target) pointed out that it so happens that $240,000 would more or less cover the 'fixed' or 'routine' part of the WSA budget, such as the ISC and WSA costs and a bare minimum level of IH travel. This would leave the remainder, about $200,000 of 'programs and projects', such as translation of Bapak's talks, which Subud entrepreneurs of the future might be more interested in funding. It is true that Bapak often told us that the lion's share of the international budget should be borne by 25% of the profit from members' enterprises, and there have been Subud entrepreneurs who have been very generous, but as far as I know it is only S.Widjojo - perhaps due to its unique history - that has felt obliged regularly to contribute the amount that Bapak specified. The problem seems to be that the low and non-existent member and enterprise contributions correspond to a poor perception of our international organisation and what it does. Talk to an average Subud member and they will tell you that they never see the international organisation and don't know what it does or why they should support it. They assume that the money they are asked to provide will be wasted on meetings with no tangible outcome. Such criticisms were eloquently expressed in the recent letter we published from Edward Mackenzie - and they clearly have some truth in them. Therefore, to achieve the three-fold increase in 'member' contributions to the international budget that we are talking about, and a revival of enterprise contributions, we immediately need to address both these criticisms. The organisation itself must change. Tuti and I have been translating Bapak's talks given in 1959, just before the first world congress, when he started guiding Subud groups in how to select their committees and explaining how committee work differed from that of the helpers. From everything he was saying it has become clear to me that he intended our organisation to be highly entrepreneurial - he expected group committees to start enterprises, social projects and so on. What we seem to have done is to spin off all those functions to the 'wings', mostly at the international level, leaving the organisation to specialise in the field of Subud politics in the name of democracy. Could it be that this much democracy is too expensive for our small membership? Perhaps that is the problem. In which case all the meetings of our organisation at the group, regional, national, zone and international level should henceforth be focusing on projects and programs that will
But it is you, our members, who have to tell us what you want. You have elected us and it is not our job to put pressure on you or to beg you for money. I shall be visiting Zonal meetings to meet with as many national delegations as I can, to try and find out what you want. Please tell them what you expect of the international organisation. If the conclusion is that you would rather do without it, we can cut costs drastically, starting with the WSC meeting in Bali. But if what you want is a more goal-driven organisation, then please help us to set our goals and we will work hard to reach them.