During his time as Minister of Culture and Tourism, he initiated the program of Visit Indonesia Year 2008, and during 2008, there were three records achieved by the ministry which were certainly due to his leadership: 1) the record number of tourists visits, up to 6.5 million visits, 2) the highest growth percentage of visits, up to 13%, and 3) the record income of tourism industry, achieving up to US$ 7.5 million.
What are the life principles, thoughts, attitudes, and the plan from Mr. Jero Wacik, looking to the future? Here is an excerpt of interview between ARTI and the engineer who graduated from Technical Machinery, Bandung Institute of Technology, which was conducted in Ministry of Culture and Tourism office, Jakarta.
What are your life principles?
The first one is to think positively. There are 100 things inside a human. There must be the negative things, which might account between 10 to 20%. Well, my principle is to look at the 80-90%, the positive ones. We don’t have to look for others weaknesses, because it will make us unproductive. If we think positively, it’s easier for us to change for progress. If everyone thinks negatively, and only see other people weaknesses, blaming each other, that will be dangerous and will cause chaos.
Secondly, in serving others, I always compare myself with the heroes. They were all ready to sacrifice their lives. I was only asked to work hard, to stay up late, to turn my head over heels, to not corrupt. How can I say no? Why can’t I do that? I haven’t been asked to sacrifice my life. I feel nothing compared to the heroes. That’s what drives me on when I work.
At the beginning of my term as minister, I was easily tired. But when I saw Mr. President, he never looked tired, while in fact he had much harder duties than me. When I was with him in an airplane, I asked him, “Sir, why have you never looked tired? What’s the secret?” He told me, “Mr. Wacik, if you feel tired, try to see and remember the faces of the people suffering, the poor people. Try to think how they need us to work hard. That motivates me to keep working.”
Well, I tried to practice that. I imagined the face of the people. I compared it with myself who was given the duty and the blessing. It’s true, past 100 days as minister, I was no longer feel easily tried. And what do you know, it’s already five years as minister, without taking a leave even for one day, and I even often forgot the Saturdays and Sundays. That’s even surprised me.
How did you build your career until you were appointed as Minister of Culture and Tourism?
The ministerial position is not seen only for the expertise on a particular field. The most important thing on ministerial level position is not a detailed knowledge in that field. The most important thing is to have integrity, including to have a strong will to serve, the ability to work hard, loyalty to the president, to the people and to the state, not corrupt, and not try to self-enriching. I feel I have the integrity and have proved that. I stopped working as businessman the moment I was appointed as Minister of Culture and Tourism.
Secondly, as it was always stated by the president about his ministerial selection, is to have leadership capacity. The important thing as a minister, I feel, is to have the ability to lead, to think macro, and to translate the vision and mission from the president into real action.
I have leadership ability since I was a little boy. When I was in elementary school, I was a head of the class. I then became the Head of Student Body Organization (OSIS) when I was in junior and senior high school. When I was in ITB, I became the Senat Chairman for Machinery students. At ITB, I feel my leadership and organizational capability was developed, because I think the best students from Indonesia were in ITB. That’s why when I became a senate chairman at ITB, I felt I had led the entire Indonesia. I was then given the award as Exemplary Student of ITB at 1973.
It was not easy to earn the title as Exemplary Student at ITB. Exemplary Students have to be extraordinary students, with achievements in academic and non academic field, extra-curriculum and talents-interests activities, and are liked by other people. I then became the Chairman of Balinese Youth. When I moved from Bandung to Jakarta, I was then appointed as the Chairman of Suka Duka Hindu Dharma Youth. The accumulation of those years as leaders has formed my leadership.
I then worked at Astra for 18 years. I was a manager there. ASTRA was a big company, and to become a manager there is not an easy feat, because we had to be able to stand face to face with foreigners, to negotiate with Japanese. I didn’t feel enough at ASTRA. So I decided to broaden my horizon. I quitted and formed my own company in Bali. I build a villa and a travel bureau. As a Balinese, it’s build in me to become a tourism worker. Since they were little, Balinese are used to deal with guests. And so, it was easy to me to develop a business in tourism.
My experience as an entrepreneur in Bali taught me that to grow tourism we need friendliness. After I became a minister of tourism, I tried to see the Indonesian nation as a whole, and I believe that we have a big capital to develop our tourism industry, that is our friendliness.
What happened after that?
In 2003, I had a thinking to run for the governor of Bali. I thought Bali needed re-organization. It can not be left as it was. But to become a governor, we have to be nominated by a political party. I was not a political party man. I then tried to surf around, to figure out which political party should I join. If I didn’t have a strong analytical and leadership skill, I might have chosen to join the wrong party. I then tried to look at the parties’ logos. I put them at my desk, I checked the important figures behind the party, and I look for a leading figure with the right chemistry with me.
Well, I was interested with the Party number nine, with the leader Mr. SBY. It was a good feeling. I knew Mr. SBY, but of course Mr. SBY didn’t know much about me. I then phoned his party’s office. I was immediately connected with one of the organizers, who happened to be my former colleague in ASTRA, Mr. Syarif Hasan. I phoned him to ask for Partai Demokrat charter. I felt they fit with me, so I joined them.
What happened next?
Each time I choose to join something, I will always give it all out. When I joined PD at December 30, 2003, I went to the office everyday, from morning to night. During the legislative election, I tried to become the representative from Bali. But I lost the election, because I was put in number four in the order. But even though I had failed to run as a legislator, I never lost my spirit. I continued campaigning for Mr. SBY. When he finally won the election as president, he chose me to become his minister. When I became minister, I then can develop my abilities and put them into use.
When you became minister, what were your first ideas?
I saw that we have a very large and beautiful country and the people are very friendly. It’s a strong basic capital. If we seriously developed this, it will bring welfare to the people. That was what I think. My main asset is the ability to think positively, I am always optimistic. Optimistic is actually the child of positive thinking. My third asset is my bravery. If it’s for my nation and country, I will be brave. To stand against Malaysia in a diplomatic meeting, how can I not be brave? So I brought together all the manpower in Ministry of Culture and Toursim, the stakeholders, including the previous former tourism ministers, to jointly build our tourism. We had to encourage the pessimistic people. Let’s go, let’s go! And finally our tourism arose.
Is there anybody who inspired you?
I often follow the way of thinking of Sir Alex Ferguson from Manchester United: never give up. On the final of the champion league, on the first minute Manchester United was already a goal down. And then the second half almost up, but there were still three minutes left on the clock. Ferguson substituted two players. On those three minutes, MU turned defeat into 2-1 victory, and won the Champions league. That’s history. I want to be like that: never give up. The Visit Indonesia Year faced enormous challenges, from facing people with pessimistic mentality, to natural obstacles, security problems, airport closed down to floods, and other things. But because we never give up, at the end of 2008, our tourism broke three records, and was given an award from MURI. What’s clear, we increase our income by US$ 7.5 billion. On the cultural fields, we had plenty of achievements and progress. The Indonesian film industry which was dying had awakened itself in terms of productive quantities and qualities. There are still controversies surrounding the Film Law. But this is still the beginning, and we’ll move step by step.
What are the duties as Minister of Culture and Tourism that you think still left unfinished?
A lot, actually. I gave my final report to the President before October 1, 2009, as requested by him. At Ministry of Culture and Tourism, there are a few pending jobs that I would like to finish, but unfortunately I didn’t have the time. One of them is the Sasando festival at Nusatenggara Timur. This musical tool is almost extinct now. President has agreed to do the festival on December 2009.
There is also the application to UNESCO for the certification of Angklung. We haven’t finished the certification of Batik, but this October it should be. But because I have resigned since October 1, 2009, I am not present at the certification ceremony. The Majapahit Park at Trowulan is also not finished yet. So is the Pre-historic Human Museum at Sangiran. There is also the Visit Museum Year 2010.
There is also the certification application for World Cultural Heritage for the paddy field landscape of Suba, Bali. The applications for Tanah Toraja and Nias as World Natural Heritage to UNESCO have been given. There are some other ‘Visit’s program unfinished yet, such as Visit Kalbar 2010, Visit Batam 2010, Visit Losari 2010, Visit Lombok Sumbawa 2012, and the development of 1000 village in the National Program of Community Empowerment (Program Nasional Pemberdayaan Masyarakat/PNPM)
If you are officially member of DPR, what would you fight for the benefit of tourism and culture?
I will fight for the tourism and culture budget to reach Rp 5 trillion. Firstly, it’s for the benefit of culture, for the better maintenance of cultural sites in the whole country. It’s also for the keeping of our statues, so that they will not be taken away from us, but to become the collection of our museums instead. It’s also to encourage the film industry, including in making heroic epic movies. In the tourism industry, we’re planning to have major promotions. Malaysia, just for their own commercials, has spent around 1.5 trillion IDR, while we only spent around 200 billion IDR.
What are your predictions for Indonesia in the next five years?
Indonesia in the next five years will be much more developed than now. The reason is because Mr. President has entered his second term in office. In the leadership theory, people who enter the second round will know a lot more about things and will be more mature. They deal with problems more decisively, and will know where the obstacles are and how to overcome it. Also with over 20% victory in DPR, he will have more support.
Also, the world’s perception about SBY is excellent. As a cultural-tourism minister, I often met other countries’ ministers. I always asked them, how do they perceive Indonesia. They said that they respect and Indonesia, and always said “Your leader is good”. So, this promises progress for the next five years. Especially if his hope can be achieved, that is his ministers can start working since the first day in office.
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