Anies Baswedan’s Formative Leadership Years: Shaping Leadership Talents Since the New Order Era
JAKARTA | KBA – Anies Baswedan’s ability to act as a mediator among various forces and societal groups has been evident for a long time. Even during his student days, Anies put forward proposals that could bridge the gap and unite students in responding to the New Order regime.
This was highlighted by Noorcholis, a student of Geodesy Engineering at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) class of 1988, who served as the Secretary-General of the Forum for Inter-Institutional Students. Anies Baswedan led this student forum, which consisted of students from various campuses across Indonesia. The organization was established on October 4, 1992, in preparation for the General Session of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) scheduled for March 1993.
The discussion on how to respond to President Soeharto’s fifth candidacy for the presidency in the 1993 MPR General Session arose after the unanimous decision of student forums from all over Indonesia to appoint Anies as the Chairman of the Forum for Inter-Institutional Students and Noorcholis as the Secretary-General.
“As the Secretary-General, he asked me to continue leading the meeting. So, I continued the meeting. The agenda of the meeting was how students should respond to the March 1993 General Session of the MPR,” Noorcholis explained in a podcast on The Spokesperson ID YouTube channel, titled “Anies Baswedan through the Eyes of Noorcholis | The Struggle and Reform Activism of Anies Baswedan,” as quoted by KBA News on Saturday, October 7, 2023.
Noorcholis mentioned that various aspirations emerged during that time, ranging from extreme to moderate. The softer approach generally came from universities that accepted the Student Senate (Senat Mahasiswa Perguruan Tinggi or SMPT) system, which had been mandated by the government since 1990. Some suggested that students should focus on improving the Student Senate organization within their respective universities.
“But there were extreme views, especially led by our friends from ITB. The ITB students were very direct in rejecting Soeharto’s candidacy for the presidency at the March 1993 General Session of the MPR,” he elaborated. ITB itself rejected the Senate system and continued to use the Forum of Department Heads (Forum Ketua Himpunan Jurusan or FKHJ), which had been established earlier.
Amid the ongoing debate that seemed to have no resolution and had turned into a heated argument, Noorcholis, as the meeting’s chairperson, eventually gave in. He then asked Anies Baswedan, as the chairman, to express his views and opinions.
“Well, when he gave his opinion, he spoke at length,” recounted the person who, at the time, served as the Chairman of the Department of Foreign Affairs for the Forum of Department Heads (FKHJ) ITB.
Anies himself opposed Soeharto’s candidacy for re-election. However, the rejection movement proposed by the Chairman of the Student Senate at UGM for the 1992-1993 term involved adopting the Family Planning (Keluarga Bencana or KB) program, which was trending at the time. The symbol and campaign for limiting the number of children featured a blue circle with “KB” and two children inside.
“What if we create a campaign with a blue circle and write ‘two terms are enough’ inside it?” he suggested.
This proposal by the Economics Faculty student at UGM was immediately accepted and approved by all activists from various campuses.
“Eventually, we used the blue circle symbol and ‘two terms are enough’ as a campaign in the form of stickers, and we also made T-shirts. We distributed these T-shirts to activist friends,” he said.
In response to Anies’s proposal, Noorcholis praised him and referred to him as a moderate figure.
“That’s why I later wrote a brief piece and called Mr. Anies a moderate. Because he could bridge the gap and find angles that were acceptable to many parties at that time,” he concluded. (kba)
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