SQUASH DISTRUST BEFORE IT SWARMS

                  Lost in mistranslation 

 

 

 President Joko Widodo & Ambassador Penny Williams.  Source: Rakyat Merdeka

 

While Australia yawns at mentions of matters relating to Indonesia, it’s much the same t’other side of the Arafura Sea.   Last century youngsters were hungry to learn English and overseas cultures.  Their appetite was met by enthusiastic teachers following a policy of raising a generation equipped to handle the world. 

Instead, the energy has bogged down in ideologies and bureaucracy notwithstanding the intentions of forward-thinkers like Harvard-educated Education Minister Nadiem Anwar Makarim. He’s a 37-year old entrepreneur drafted by President Joko Widodo to shake up the education sector, only to collide with the power of reactionaries seeing secularism behind reform.

Distrust of Western values and Australian intentions is pervasive so all the more reason to try harder.  That doesn’t seem to be on new Ambassador Penny Williams’ agenda.  Despite knowing the language and past involvement in progressive causes (she’s a former Ambassador for Women and Girls) the lady’s yet to make a splash. In the last three months, she’s put out only ten press statements, mostly on trivial matters. 

Apart from a tweet from Makassar, it appears she didn’t recognise Australia Day through any speeches or mainstream media.  (Her office hasn’t responded to a request for details.) Here was an opportunity to explain how Australian unions helped the revolutionaries liberate Indonesia from the colonial Dutch.  It’s a forgotten story for this century’s generation so needs continuous retelling.

If that’s currently considered too political for Canberra, Williams could clarify that her nation’s not a British franchise as many think because the Union Jack’s on our flag and the Queen’s image on our currency.

Nor are we the US ‘deputy sheriff’ in the region as former PM John Howard reportedly said in 1999.  The offensive tag remains fresh because Australia supported the East Timor referendum, also in 1999.  We can be proud of our initiatives and peacekeeping, our billion-dollar aid when the 2004 tsunami ripped Aceh, but that doesn’t mean we’re loved.

For Indonesians, the Unitary State is sacrosanct so the loss of the Portuguese territory it invaded in 1976 has left a deep and weeping wound.  That’s not the only irritant.

Some argue the AUKUS alliance and build-up of foreign troops and weaponry in Northern Australia are ‘too close for comfort’ and could trigger an arms race. These alarms have been addressed, though only lightly.

Instead of explanation and education, we use trade to find ‘not just a respected partner but a valued one as well’. That’s according to Agriculture Minister David Littleproud.

His message is monetary: ‘Indonesia is Australia’s fourth-largest market for bulk primary produce … valued at $2.9 billion (last financial) year.’  We want to feed you, not know you.  Curiously WA, which pioneered business and cultural ties with East Java across 30 years, has now downgraded the deal.

Despite the ravages of Covid killing 144,000 and infecting 4.3 million (Reuters’ figures from official sources and widely considered too low) the Indonesian economy is going gangbusters.

The World Bank's Global Economic Prospects forecasts growth this year will hit 5.2 per cent, but there’ll be minimal trickle-down. Oxfam research shows the four richest men in Indonesia own as much wealth as the country’s poorest 100 million citizens.

 Australian 2021 budget papers projected 3.75 per cent this fiscal year, so some catch-ups are needed.  We’re no longer masters of economic management haughtily telling ‘developing nations’ how to add and subtract.

Just as Australians can be racists, Indonesians aren’t always the pliant friendly folk of tourist brochures. In 1965 a bloody coup in Jakarta was followed by the slaughter of an estimated 500,000 real or imagined fellow travellers by civilian militias weaponised by the army.

We know of the Holocaust in Europe though not the genocide close by.

There have been other outbursts of violence, often focussing on minorities.  Ethnic Chinese are usually the targets along with so-called deviant Islamic sects.

Another eruption of hate could send a wave of asylum seekers heading our way as they did after the 1998 riots when President Soeharto quit, though they’d most likely come by plane, have full wallets and follow faiths other than Islam.

To ensure a benign view of the people next door, this distressing history is blacked out in Australia by the ‘moderate Muslim’ label, though scholars question the term’s meaning.  Likewise, the termites of corruption gnaw away in almost every departmental nook and immune to pest controllers. 

A decade ago Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index ranked Indonesia 96 among 179 nations.  Its position now is 102.  This frightens the Western investors Widodo says he wants to attract, but won’t get serious.

Ongoing anti-graft government campaigns use billboards, pledges and stern statements – all ineffective because the political will is absent, as with the Australian government's plan to establish an anti-corruption commission.

The first stage in fixing problems is to accept their presence and examine the reasons.  Neither Indonesia nor Australia is currently inclined to confront ignorance, misunderstanding and distrust which threaten the connections.  

They’ll be a wake up when there’s an explosion of fury for some seemingly mild political stumble, like Scott Morrison’s 2019 proposal to move our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  Mobs protested in Indonesia, forcing the closure of two consulates.

Friction points include a low-level insurgency between West Papuan separatists and the Indonesian military, hidden from world view by Jakarta censorship equal to the Chinese cover-up of its alleged anti-Uyghur campaign.

Lawyer Veronica Koman, a prominent advocate for the dissidents, has taken refuge in Australia.  She’s wanted by the Indonesian police for ‘provocation’ and ‘spreading hoaxes’.  If Jakarta demands extradition there’ll be anger aplenty.

The late Australian Professor Jamie Mackie wrote: ‘The first and most dangerous of the problems ahead — and possibly the most likely — are issues relating to separatist movements in Papua
and the support they garner within Australia.

‘This tends to arouse suspicions in Indonesia that Australians have a hidden agenda to bring
about the dismemberment of Indonesia as a unitary state. Because of the complex, emotionally charged political dynamics within each country associated with this, it could easily get out of hand and prove difficult for both governments to resolve through calm negotiations.

Better to spruce up the relationship now than wait till what remains collapses into misunderstandings and ill will.  The next Presidential direct election will be on 14 February 2024 and there’s a chance Prabowo Subianto, who’ll then be 72, will have his third crack at the top job.

In 1998 the former general was discharged after his troops kidnapped and tortured student protestors. He then fled to Jordan and was banned from entering the US.

Prabowo is Indonesia’s Trump lite who’d ignite the wrath of human rights activists worldwide if elected. After his 2019 loss supporters rioted in Jakarta. Eight died and more than 700 were injured. Few think the violence was spontaneous.

Prabowo is now Minister of Defence, drawn into the inner circle by  Widodo who followed US President Lyndon Johnson’s advice on handling FBI Director J Edgar Hoover: ‘It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in’.

Offering a Cabinet post to a defeated opponent after a vicious campaign is a fine ‘forgive thine enemies’ gesture, but it wouldn’t rock in the West, even in countries that claim to follow Christian principles.

All the more reason to get to know the neighbours.  Mackie offered scores of suggestions in his 155-page Lowy essay, but don’t ask any wannabe politicians to show the way in this year’s campaign. 

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 14 February 2022:https://johnmenadue.com/lost-in-mistranslation-australian-soft-power-goes-missing-in-indonesia/

 

##

 

 

OUR CLOSEST STRANGERS

 

    Indonesia invisible across the election landscape

 

 

This commentary was primed to read:  Australians couldn’t care a rat’s about Indonesia, and that’s bad. The conclusion morphed to ‘sad’, then ‘worrying’. Verily it’s an unholy trilogy, and the attitudes are little better in reverse. This should be an issue in the upcoming election.  It’s not.

Any politician bothering to respond will shout ‘hogwash’ and turn on a flow of deals and dollars sent or spent, MOUs signed, flags waved, then add: ‘Some of my best friends are Indonesians,’ confident reporters won’t ask for names because they don’t have any either.

This is the unsettling reality:  We know about US politicians, even Supreme Court judges, but next to nowt about their Indonesian counterparts as the ABC and other agencies have pulled journos out of Jakarta. Though not Washington and London.  So our info comes through foreign wires.

We hear the Fox News faux outrages, but not the reasoned analyses of Indonesia’s intellectuals who often communicate in English.

US school shootings are listed as isolated actions of deranged individuals, while the low-level threats of RI’s few active fundamentalists supposedly define the nation. (Thanks to Australian intelligence and training, Indonesia’s Densus 88 counter-terrorism squad seems to have the villains on the run.)

Broad vistas need specific markers, so here goes: Both major political parties read polls commissioned for the upcoming election.  They’re helped by the annual measure of our attitudes towards Indonesia run by the Lowy Institute.  Southeast Asia Programme director Ben Bland decoded the data: 

 ‘Whether asked about their warmth toward Indonesia, confidence in its leaders, or even their level of basic knowledge about their biggest neighbour, Australians tend to show a combination of disinterest and distrust.’

To be blunt, we’re telling psephologists the neighbours are on the nose, so candidates see no votes in arguing for improvement.  Nor are there any ideological urges to change a situation that distresses some dons, diplomats and global citizens, but bothers few others.

Imagine Scott Morrison or Anthony Albanese launching their campaigns with Paul Keating’s 1996 line: ‘No country is more important to Australia than Indonesia. If we fail to get this relationship right and nurture and develop it, the whole web of our foreign relations is incomplete.’  The turn-off would be audible from Cairns to Carnarvon.

Why do we ignore the nation nearby with a population 11 times larger than ours?  Maybe because it’s too darn difficult to understand and right now the state is stable. Bi-level treaties are tougher to digest than the price of bread.

Yet Indonesia demands attention.  It’s a democracy and a member of the G20, a cluster of the world’s most powerful economies.  This year it holds the chair and plans a grand gathering in Bali this October.  We’re invited.

In 2008 historian Hugh White wrote that Indonesia’s move to democracy early this century was ‘one of the most remarkable and admirable political transformations in history.  And yet Australian approaches to Indonesia are still dominated by images and attitudes framed by the Soeharto era (1965-98) underpinned by xenophobia.’

Although Keating’s rhetoric and White’s assessment remain valid they have no impact on today’s politics where party leaders have just enough vision to see where the mob’s going and tag along.

Melbourne University’s Tim Lindsey has called the two countries the ‘Odd Couple’:

‘… for those Indonesians and Australians who have no personal or professional connection with the other country,  perceptions are … at best, deeply ambivalent, even confused, about each other. Above all, they are deeply suspicious.

‘Their perceptions are dominated by anger, hostility, contempt and fear, are vituperative in expression and are often wildly inaccurate in content. And they are easily inflamed lazy and ignorant journalists and by politicians looking for a populist can to kick.’

In 2018 Lindsey and colleague Dave McRae claimed: ‘There are no two neighbouring countries anywhere in the world that are more different than Indonesia and Australia. They differ hugely in religion, language, culture, history, geography, race, economics, worldview and population.

‘In fact, Indonesia and Australia have almost nothing in common other than the accident of geographic proximity. This makes their relationship turbulent, volatile and often unpredictable.’

Thousands would disagree with this assessment– particularly those who used to holiday in Bali and report low prices, awesome landscapes, benign traditions and warm welcomes from those paid a pittance to smile.

Bali, with 4.3 million residents, is an anomaly.  Of Indonesia’s 34 provinces it’s the only one where the majority are Hindu, descendants of the Majapahit Kingdom (1293 – 1527) who fled east from Java for reasons unclear.   Bali is beaut, but the political power is held by the Javanese.

 An estimated 88 per cent of Indonesians follow Islam – that’s roughly 235 million. Then come 17 million Protestants and seven million Catholics, with the rest a smattering of Buddhists and Confucianists dotted across the archipelago of 6,000 occupied islands.

We know these figures because a government-approved belief has to be stamped on citizens’ Kartu Tanda Penduduk (ID card). The Indonesian Constitution says it upholds freedom of faith.  That doesn’t mean freedom from religion which governs every aspect of life.

These slices of facts show that getting to grips with a country that’s home to more Muslims than any other state is a tough task, compounded by the range of interpretations of Islam, as there are with Christianity.  

Change is underway. Nahdlatul Ulama (revival of the scholars), which claims more than 40 million members is shifting from the rigid Saudi Wahhabism doctrines responsible for much bad press.  The Gusdurians, named after the late fourth President Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur) are youngsters pushing humanism and promoting inter-faith events. Australians could get involved to show we’re not godless.

Amongst this liberalism are some confusing (to outsiders) contradictions. In the last few years wearing the jilbab (headscarf) has become as widespread as tight jeans.  Cathedral-size mosques better suited to cities are being built in villages well-supplied with places of worship.  Protests against the alleged mistreatment of Muslims overseas are primarily directed at Israel, not China and Myanmar.

 Easier to understand algorithms or National Cabinet rules on containing Covid, but we’d have a better feel with a grasp of the language and culture.

That used to be the case when these topics were on school curricula and offered at unis.  The decline has been dramatic:  Since 2006, Year 12 enrolments in Indonesian have halved according to Melbourne University’s Hamish Curry: ‘Without nation-wide policies, consistent data, funding and collective support, Indonesian could be relegated to a forgotten corner of our educational experiences.’

So far neither Labor nor the Coalition has promised a U-turn.

 

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 10 February 2022: https://johnmenadue.com/indonesia-invisible-across-the-election-landscape/

CASTRATING THE KPK - SLOWLY

 

ERASING THE UNTOUCHABLES: THE INDONESIAN WAY    

 

 

 Source:  Working with the Grain

Corruption erodes trust, weakens democracy, throttles development and causes widespread pain and harm, according to Transparency International.  For many years the Indonesian Government seemed determined to crush the villainy.  That resolve is now being questioned.

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Corporate tsars and the political powerful rarely back independent probes into official misconduct– unless limited to their rivals. Canberra has yet to debate such an authority, while next door Indonesia’s oligarchs are destroying their Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (Corruption Eradication Commission), not with a bang which might alarm, but many whimpers.

In 1998 Indonesia’s second president Soeharto resigned during the Asian Financial Crisis when huge crowds demanded democracy and an end to avarice.  During the authoritarian kleptocrat’s 32 years in power, his family reportedly amassed US $30 billion by plundering the public purse and demanding bribes.  The former general was never prosecuted and died in 2008.  The money has not been recovered.

The KPK was established in December 2003 during the presidency of Megawati Sukarnoputri, though the foundations had been laid earlier when the liberal cleric Abdurrahman Wahid (aka Gus Dur) ruled (1999 – 2001). 

The political atmosphere at the time was heady with the promise of starting afresh and washing away the filth from decades of palm-greasing staining the nation’s name and known as KKN – Korupsi, Kolusi, Nepotisme.

The Commission set about its duties with energy and positive publicity.  Early hits were a who’s who of oligarchs, government ministers, corporate crooks and high-profile socialites.

One of the most sickening cases involved former social affairs minister Juliari Peter Batubara, a Protestant member of the ruling Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan, (PDI-P Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle).  The spiv was jailed for 12 years for trousering $2.25 million from funds budgeted to buy Covid-19 relief packages for the poor.

Like many fellow malefactors, Batubara realised too late that the KPK was not like other authorities allegedly ready to drop investigations in return for cash-stuffed envelopes.  Its formidable powers included warrantless wiretaps, travel bans, freezing bank accounts and detaining suspects.

During the golden years, the Untouchables were TV news regulars hustling famous names into cars after late-night raids on sky-level homes and offices.

With a 100 per cent success rate, the KPK rapidly became the most trusted and supported agency in Indonesia, peaking in 2013 with the Ramon Magsaysay Award, named after the former Philippine President who had a reputation for integrity and idealism. 

The prize has been run since 1957 by the NY-based Rockefeller Brothers’ Trust Fund. It called the KPK ‘a fiercely independent government body that serves as a symbol of hope and reform.’  It wouldn’t say that now.

When the current president Joko Widodo won his first five-year term in 2014 supporters were certain he’d support the overworked KPK facing a backlog of 16,200 cases.

They expected an idealist but got a pragmatist who’d rather concentrate on his nation’s infrastructure than its integrity. Ironically he also wants overseas money, though ethical Western investors shun countries that tolerate dirty deals. (Some nations like the US, the UK and Australia, have laws where citizens can be prosecuted in their homeland for bribing bureaucrats abroad.)

Presidential Chief of Staff Moeldoko seemed unaware his country had ratified the UN Convention against Corruption when he allegedly dubbed the KPK ‘a hindrance to investment’. Though he later added that he meant the KPK law, it seemed he’d revealed the administration’s real concerns.

Because the Commission had widespread support the erosion has been subtle.  The agency needed to focus more on graft prevention than law enforcement, according to new chair Firli Bahuri, appointed by Widodo in 2019 for a five-year term.  This was despite the KPK Ethics Council having found him guilty of a ‘gross violation’ by allegedly alerting a suspect.

The former Commissioner General of Police had enjoyed a lacklustre career in uniform, though a shining contact list which includes Megawati.  The unchallenged queen of the ruling PDI-P is rumoured to be Widodo’s dalang (puppet master).

Last October the daughter of first president Soekarno (1945-65) got the job of chairing the steering committee of the National Research and Innovation Agency, an amalgamation of five state institutions.

The appointment startled the academic community hoping for leadership from an internationally acclaimed scientist.  There are a few like US-educated physicist Yohanes Surya, though  Indonesia has no Nobel laureates.

Megawati, 75, failed to complete her studies at two unis (agriculture at one, psychology at another), but now holds nine honorary doctorates.  Despite her lack of qualifications she’s apparently ‘obsessed’ with science, an interest she’s kept secret till now.

But away from perceived nepotism and back to the KPK.  Bahuri’s changes included ordering long-term investigators who’d put many brigands behind bars, to take a civil service examination. They reportedly included personal queries:  ‘Why are you not married at this age? Do you still have a desire? Do you want to be my second wife? What do you do when you're dating?’

 Fifty-one failed the test and were kicked out.  Widodo reportedly said he didn’t want the staff ousted and neither did the public.  Their concerns made no difference.

Among the rejects was Indonesia’s Eliot Ness, Novel Baswedan who’d lost an eye when hydrochloric acid was thrown in his face after he left a mosque.  He’d been investigating allegations of police force wrongdoings and a case involving politicians collecting bribes through an ID electronic card project

In a curious development, Baswedan and his sacked colleagues were then offered jobs with the police.

The KPK rot continued within. In September 2020 the agency’s Supervisory Council found Bahuri guilty of indulging in a ‘hedonistic lifestyle’ after he chartered a helicopter to fly home.  He was tickled with a written reprimand and kept his job.

Last September KPK deputy Lili Pintauli Siregar tipped off a North Sumatra city mayor that he was a suspect. The law says KPK leaders could face up to five years in jail for alerting anyone under investigation.

Her salary was docked Rp 1.85 million (AUD 181) a month.  No big deal. Her allowances are ten times that sum. If the KPK’s bosses don’t follow the rules, why should others bother? 

 Zaenur Rohman of Gadjah Mada University’s Centre for Anticorruption Studies reportedly said:  ‘The KPK had its worst record in handling corruption cases. In fact, the Attorney General’s Office performed better, handling corruption cases involving (state insurance companies) Jiwasraya and Asabri that involved trillions of rupiah in state losses.’

An editorial in The Jakarta Post commented pithily: ‘Things are really dire if the AGO, an agency not known for its integrity or good performance, outdid the KPK.’

Just before 2021 ended Widodo addressed KPK staff on International Anti-corruption Day.  He didn’t order hard-line persecution of crims as the public demands (some have called for the death penalty), but went soft:  ‘Corruption eradication should not only mean an arrest being made. Preventing corruption is more fundamental.’

So the archipelago’s streetscapes are now befouled with big posters featuring men in uniform telling citizens to neither give nor receive bribes, though it is common knowledge this remains the best way to get bureaucrats to perform their duties and do so speedily.

 Government departments and uni campuses declare they are graft-free zones as though immoral behaviour is like a virus.

The education-not-prosecution line has been followed by Bahuri who, unlike Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, doesn’t believe we have an innate sense of right and wrong.  Bahuri wants parents to instil moral behaviours in their kiddies ‘so that an anti-corruption mentality is built and formed in every individual in this Republic.’

There has been change - downwards.  A decade ago Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index ranked Indonesia 96 among 179 nations.  Its position now is 102.  

First published in New Mandala 8 Feb 2022:  https://www.newmandala.org/erasing-the-untouchables-the-indonesian-way/