The Year of Essential
Reading
An election year doesn’t just bloom politicians – it also fertilizes
a flowering of books. So far this year
two excellent additions: Elizabeth Pisani’s Indonesia
Etc [review published in The Jakarta
Post 4 August 2014] and Australian journalist Hamish McDonald’s Demokrasi.
The books are different yet complementary. One is an anecdotal tour of the archipelago
using the micro to illuminate the macro, this one a crisp, more formal
historical, social and political state-of-the nation account. Both are essential
reads for anyone interested in this complex and curious country.
McDonald was a foreign correspondent in Jakarta between 1975
and 1978. In 1980 he earned his reporter’s Medal of Honor by being banned for writing
Suharto’s Indonesia, a book reviewed
at the time as ‘solid, well-written and balanced … a combination that is rare.’
The same qualities are present in Demokrasi, making it an ideal resource except for one crippling
omission – no chapter notes. This is
strange because McDonald is now with the Australian National University;
academics are ferocious about referencing, however notable the writer and lucid
the writing.
McDonald, a mite bashfully, explains Demokrasi is “a quick overview …and in some aspects has been
streamlined for ease of reading.” Possible translation: We’ve cut references to
keep costs down. Suggestion: Put the sources
on a dedicated website.
This book was written before the inauguration of President
Joko [Jokowi] Widodo but remains current with much background on him and his
failed rival, Prabowo Subianto. This
includes the allegation that Prabowo once told ethnic Chinese businessman
Sofyan Wanandi, that he was ready ‘to drive all the Chinese out of the country,
even if that sets the economy back 20 or 30 years.’
Sofyan, also known as Sofjan, helped start the
anti-communist think tank Centre for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS]
in 1971, and offered advice to the Soeharto government till 1988.
McDonald wrote this book helped by a fellowship and room at
the CSIS in Jakarta, but also spent time in the provinces, including four days
in West Papua, though restricted to the capital Jayapura.
A stupid decision by the military because it meant the
author had to rely on the views of others who believe a slow genocide is
underway through warfare and transmigration from Java, making the Papuans a
minority in their own land. Had McDonald been allowed free access he might have
come to different conclusions.
This is a book to help fit together the complex pieces of
the sleazy and corrupt jigsaw of Jakarta politics. For example, it reminds that Vice President Jusuf
Kalla was mired in vote buying during the 2004 Golkar conference.
President Jokowi was helped to become Jakarta Governor by
Prabowo, which partly explains the old general’s surly opposition. McDonald reports
that despite Jokowi’s “perceived disregard for political guile … [he] paid
careful homage to entrenched power groups”.
These included the Special Forces unit Kopassus; when
soldiers were accused of breaking into a jail in 2013 and killing four
prisoners, Jokowi visited their headquarters as “a gesture of support.”
Nothing is quite what it seems in Indonesian politics where
candidates jettison principles according to the wind direction, marry into each
other’s families like medieval European royalty and go party shopping; if rebuffed
they just start their own fiefdoms and tack on the word ‘democratic’.
Western palates are not always appropriate to savor this
noodle bowl of power. In commenting on the Muhammadiyah organization McDonald
writes: “Labels are difficult: Orthodox
does not necessarily mean conservative; ‘progressive’ or ‘modernist’ can also
look orthodox and revivalist.”
So let’s add a new word to English: ‘Demokrasi’ - the
Indonesian way of doing democracy.
The chapter on religion opens with a marvellously contradictory
image – pious young men reading the Koran before a suggestive portrait of the
goddess Nyai Loro Kidul, the so-called Queen of the South Sea.
This synthesis of traditional beliefs with an imported faith
has helped create a largely tolerant society, though pockets of hate remain. Strangely Indonesia’s position as the largest
Muslim nation by population “is not matched by its authority on religious or
Middle East questions. It remains a receiver of wisdom from the Arab world,
rather than a messenger of multi-religious tolerance.”
Why? That’s a
question for another book.
The challenge facing Western writers is to find the
genuinely positive aspects of Indonesia.
It’s easy to focus on the negatives - appalling neglect of the
infrastructure, corruption that corrodes everyone’s lives, a dysfunctional
public service, persistent and debilitating poverty and an absence of basic
services. Just one figure tells much - 14 per cent of urban dwellers don’t have
access to toilets.
Though McDonald doesn’t shy from the faults and flaws he’s
usually optimistic, even amidst illegal land clearing, the despair of
conservationists everywhere: “The picture is a familiar one; good intentions
and policies at the top undermined by a lack of enforcement capacity on the
ground and by the corruption of the agencies supposed to monitor and guard the
forests. Still the approach [mapping to
determine protection zones] cannot be written off.”
Indonesia hasn’t fallen apart. It’s not Egypt. It’s not
Thailand. Terrorism has so far been contained. The media is so free some
outlets publish manufactured stories. Democracy
seems to have survived. Despite the bitter election campaign and fears of blood
in the streets, the election and inauguration went well.
McDonald wraps up his book with “an old Jakarta saying:
‘Anyone who thinks he understands the situation is sadly mistaken’.” He’s
right. For outsiders the Indonesian journey is serpentine. It scales peaks and
crevasses. It diverts. It is never ending.
Some of American poet T S Eliot’s verse could have been
written for Indonesia: ‘We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all
our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the
first time’.
Demokrasi – Indonesia in the 21st Century
by Hamish McDonald
Published by
Black Inc, Melbourne
(First published in The Jakarta Post 10 November 2014)
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