Back
to the good ol’ ways
Cities can snap-back from the
Corona-19 crisis – though not necessarily to a New Normal. Jakarta shows how.
The Old Normal of over-filled markets
and traffic-choked streets is back in the Indonesian capital and other centres
across the archipelago. Before-and-after
urban plague pix show few differences.
The most striking are garish banners
featuring comic figures warning citizens to wash hands, stay apart and wear
masks. In the foreground, eyes downcast,
shuffle the unimpressed and unprotected.
The billboards have been more facade
than substance. Few Indonesians are
seeing the pandemic primarily as a medical issue – and that includes the
government.
Trapped between the hidden coral
threatening a public health wreck and the exposed rocks of an economic disaster,
the government is navigating a high-risk passage.
It’s decided to sail over the hazards
it can’t see, gambling the crew will stay fit and the ship of state won't founder,
ripped apart by job losses and social riots.
Many think Captain Joko Widodo is using the wrong compass, and that includes Lapor (report) a new NGO which calls itself the Citizens’ Coalition for Covid-19.
It says it’s crowdsourced by ‘a group of individuals who have concerns
about citizens' rights and public health issues related to the Covid-19
pandemic’. Eleven NGOs including Transparency International and the Alliance of
Independent Journalists are listed as supporting the initiative.
Offering itself as a muster point for information ‘that has so far
escaped the government’s reach’ its pronouncements have to date been sober and
backed by legitimate sources.
To avoid being seen as subversives (the user-ready slur turns docile
dissidents into red-fanged Communists) the Lapor
operatives are claiming the status of supporters.
They say their data will help the government ‘determine policies and
steps for handling Covid-19 in the field’.
This implies the national administration, with its 4.5 million employees,
isn’t using its resources efficiently.
At the moment Lapor seems to be
what it claims, though in Indonesia it’s always worth pondering other motives
and undisclosed backers. Its definition of ‘help’ won’t cheer Widodo. It means using info from the regions which
allegedly show the real death toll is about 3.5 times greater than official
stats. At the time of keyboarding these were 32,033 confirmed cases and 1,883
deaths.
Lapor started in March when the
Palace was misleading people about the oncoming pandemic. Giveaways included the president urging the
sick to drink jamu (traditional
herbal potions), keep calm and carry on.
He also backed Donald Trump’s cure-all chloroquine offering no evidence
other than the POTUS endorsement.
When the plague became too gross to ignore Widodo said he’d sung a
lullaby to avoid scaring the littlies, forgetting they were monitoring world
news on their smartphones.
Among the early cynics were journalists and academics, predictably
labelled scaremongers and urged to pray by Health Minister Dr
Terawan Agus Putranto. A cluster of NGOs has demanded his sacking
for ‘an absence of sensitive, responsive and effective
leadership’. Widodo has stuck by the lieutenant-general from an army hospital, though the calls for change persist.
Amid the many problems facing the world’s third-largest democracy (though
only just leaving adolescence) is that the people don’t trust government
information.
With good cause. The 32-year
dictatorship of General Soeharto which only ended in 1998 was characterised by
grand-scale corruption and the crushing of opposition.
Newspapers were thin and bland. The government channel TVRI news could only telecast uniformed ministers
announcing grand policies which seldom eventuated. Think Kim Jong-un studying
maps in a horseshoe of quivering generals.
No use reporters raging against the machine for they’d get crushed. So
hacks relied on overseas broadcasts (shortwave Radio Australia was particularly
popular) and photocopies of smuggled foreign papers to spread the news.
Indonesians are pragmatic. Editors
used double entendre and spliced real news into government handouts knowing
most ministers were too dense to decode the wordplay.
Although the government offers handouts to the poor, the welfare safety net is considered too patchy to provide confidence. The latest cash splash of Rp 677.2 trillion (AUD 69 billion) follows two others totalling more than Rp 1,000 trillion (AUD 103 billion) to stimulate the economy, give tax breaks and quake-proof state-owned enterprises.
Last week Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati argued the sandbags would keep growth above zero, but Japan-trained economist Dr Piter Abdullah disagreed. The research director at Indonesia’s Centre of Reform on Economics was quoted as saying:
‘The country needs a bigger health care budget to manage the outbreak. If we’re not ready, then there’s a possibility of a second wave ... the proposed budget for social protection is too small amid the threat of rising poverty.’
Lifting the ‘partial lockdown’ this week gave the official green light for a return to work or job-seeking. It was an academic gesture. Jumping the red to get ahead of the crush is common at traffic lights when cops doze, so ignoring orders to stay home came naturally.
All this is history as the busses and trains are now moving masses of commuters and shoppers around Jakarta’s 6,400 square kilometres, the world’s second-most populous metro area after Tokyo’s 37 million.
Japan seems to be on top of the plague. Although more than 900 have perished the per capita death rate is 40 times less than the US. This has been attributed to a disciplined public, trustworthy stats and the government’s rapid response, factors absent in Indonesia’s Old Normal handling of the crisis.
First published in Pearls & Irritations, 11 June 2020:
https://johnmenadue.com/duncan-graham-back-to-the-good-ol-ways-in-jakarta/
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