DON'T CRY FOR ME INDONESIA - I NEVER LEFT YOU

 KEEPING IT IN THE FAMILY

Why did well over half the 200-plus million Indonesian registered electors choose disgraced general Prabowo Subianto as their next President?  Duncan Graham has some answers.

Authority - and fun.  The former cashiered general banned from the US and Australia in a previous life has on early counts  won almost 60 per cent of the popular vote.  Locally he’s considered certain to be the  Republic’s eighth president in October when sworn-in.   He’s even been congratulated by PM Anthony Albanese on X.

He got to the top by portraying himself dishonestly. He purported to be a softie, a good guy when in reality he's an army thug who allegedly did evil things in Java and East Timor.

Prabowo's earlier campaigns (he tried three times and lost the lot) had him as a strutting dictator much like Mussolini the pro-Hitler leader of Italy in the 1930s, complete with a prancing stallion and ranks of guards.

His 2024 appeal was not as a fascist but a jolly oldie, a try-hard who deserved the chance to run the world’s fourth largest nation with 280 million just like the present popular president Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo.

The division is stark, the “gap between the richest and the rest in Indonesia (growing) faster than in any other country in Southeast Asia,” according to Oxfam International.

“It is now the sixth country of greatest wealth inequality in the world. Today, the four richest men in Indonesia have more wealth than the combined total of the poorest 100 million people.”

Prabowo and his brother Hashim Djojohadikusumo, 69, are among the mega-rich.  Unlike Jokowi who came from a riverside shack and could relate to the downtrodden, Prabowo has always been up there with the elite and has no personal knowledge of poverty.

The vast sums spent on getting him elected created an atmosphere of must-win, will-win.

In the 2019 election where Jokowi beat Prabowo by 11 points, religion was considered so important that the winner had an aged Islamic scholar as his sidekick.  This time faith was barely an issue; though Gibran Rakabuming, his Dad and Prabowo are all Muslims they’re  not known for their piety.

Hashim, Prabowo’s brother and co-founder of their Gerindra Party, is a Christian.  So was their late mother  Dora Maria Sigar.  But the family’s beliefs didn’t become a factor in this year’s campaign in a nation where religion dominates all, from food to clothing to lifestyle.

Prabowo was seen as a leader with authority who wouldn't bother electors with boring issues like the economy, corruption, debt to China and foreign relations.  Leave that to the minority eggheads.  The people wanted cheaper foods and a tough guy who'll take them back to the imagined glorious days of his late one-time father-in-law Soeharto.

The second president handled everything, including the killing of anyone that got in his way.  His administration called itself Orde Baru (New Order). Soeharto was a ruthless military dictator who neutered opposition by orchestrating the genocide of an estimated half-million ‘Communists’.

The US and Australia approved. The late PM Harold Holt was quoted as telling the New York Times: "With 500,000 to 1 million Communist sympathizers knocked off, I think it is safe to assume a reorientation has taken place.”

Prabowo comes from the same hate factory.  Most volunteers who join the military in any country are women and men who like killing people and fixing problems with force.  They tend to be doers, not debaters. They thrive on discipline.

It's a condemnation of Indonesian schooling  that the present generation is tragically  too ill-educated to inquire and research, to discover for themselves the candidates asking for their backing.

Other factors in Prabowo’s win include Jokowi being insulted by his party head and fifth president Megawati Soekarnoputri - daughter of first president Soekarno.  The public thought this morally wrong.

There's been an abundance of comments and what it means for the democratic future of the nation; much has been the moaning of losers.  An exception has been the Harvard-educated  Islamic scholar Ulil Abshar Abdalla, one of the country’s progressive intellectuals.

In the country’s leading broadsheet Kompas he wrote that “Prabowo’s win reflects the popular desire for continuity rather than change.

"Like it or not, we have to listen carefully to this popular wisdom. Is the narrative of democratic decline really a concern for the wider public, or, on the contrary, only a concern for the middle-class educated group? The people may have different priorities than the issue of democratic decline."

Bothering the "educated groups" has been the nepotism that allowed the courts to give Gibran  36, the right to run as Prabowo's vice-presidential candidate when the law says the minimal age is 40.  Having an uncle as a judge helped the young fellow’s case.

So what?  Graft is widespread and long accepted - except by the ethical thinkers and they’re in the minority.  What the majority know is that Gibran’s Dad is a good guy so his offspring must be the same.  

The reasoning runs that Jokowi, 62,  (who Constitutionally can’t stand for a third term) will be on hand to jerk the strings of his puppet son and through him the new president.

Blessing the union and having the new president continue his predecessor’s policies ( adding free lunch boxes and milk for schoolkids) is all that the majority of voters want to know.

That thinking is flawed; unpredictable and egotistical Prabowo won’t be told how to govern.  

His opponents are reportedly looking at “possible fraud” alleging his camp resorted to “legal manipulation, various forms of coercion, and abuse of state resources to gain an advantage in the contest.”

Their inquiries will go nowhere.

Having the time and energy to debate the subtleties is a privilege only for the oligarchs and their political and media mates.  The wee folk, known as wong cilik have little interest in world affairs or that their nation’s economy now ranks 16^th in the world, and is moving higher.

Prabowo spoke to them with slogans, not statistics.  His rivals, Dr Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo - candidates with strong administrative experience as governors - were hampered by treating the electorate seriously and releasing policy statements.

Both men were interviewed by Western journalists and replied in English to Human Rights Watch inquiries.  Prabowo, who was educated in the UK and US, refused media requests including from this correspondent.

His tactic was to relate to the electorate by shouting flim-flam promises and basking in the glory of having Jokowi's son as a "cool" partner - as the first-time voters said.  It paid off.  

Now we wait to see if his critics will be cowed into submission by Prabowo's  Orde Baru Versi Dua. (Version Two) with opponents jailed like the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Perhaps Prabowo as president will turn out to be a reformer embracing dissidents.  Maybe wombats will find airspace.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 20 February 2024:  https://johnmenadue.com/keeping-it-in-the-family/

 

 

 

REGRESSION

 INDONESIA CHOOSES - BACK TO THE PAST    

           

First, the good news from Jakarta on the day after the national election.

The asphalt will not turn red. Canberra and Washington warning their citizens to stay inside and beware of riots were misplaced - no evidence-free allegations that the vote had been rigged, no overturned fire-bombed cop cars, no killings.

Instead, hundreds of thousands cheered and danced to celebrate the apparent win of their heroes - disgraced former general Prabowo Subianto, 72,  and his vice-president sidekick Gibran Rakabuming Raka, 36.  

He’s the eldest son of the present president Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo and mayor of small-town Solo. He was supposedly recruited to attract the youth vote, but also to keep Dad’s infrastructure policies going - particularly the new capital and palace in East Kalimantan.

Although final figures are still unavailable, a quick count yesterday night put the pair capturing 58 per cent of the vote, far ahead of the second place (25 per cent)  held by Dr Anies Baswedan, a one-time academic and governor of Jakarta,

The third candidate, Ganjar Pranowo, the former governor of Central Java, was almost out of sight with 17 per cent.

So Prabowo is set to take over in October.  He'll be the nation's eighth leader since the 1945 Revolution when first president Soekarno declared the archipelago a Republic free from the three-century grip of the Dutch.  A four-year guerrilla war followed before The Hague realised its colonial era was past.

In 1965 Soekarno was overthrown by the military led by General Soeharto who instigated the genocide of maybe 500,000 real or imagined Communists.  More than 32 years of authoritarian rule known as Orde Baru (New Order) followed. In 1998 Soeharto resigned in the face of widespread demands for democracy.

In the late 1700s, the French Revolution guillotined the ruling royalty to ensure they'd never return. The Indonesian activists who brought down Soeharto at the turn of this century didn't want bloodshed;  they naively assumed the King of the Kleptocrats and his cronies would disappear into quiet retirement tending their grand gardens, all wreathed in shame.

Wrong call: The Soeharto-era just shook its shoulders and garnered the funds to mount a full-on assault on the Palace using the new democracy.

Yesterday's voters knew little of the past and seemed to care less. It didn't matter to them that Prabowo, a professional soldier, had been dishonourably discharged for disobeying orders and then fled to exile in Jordan.

Three US presidents banned him from their country for violating human rights in both Indonesia and East Timor. He was also banned from Australia till 2019 when he entered as  Defence Minister.

With the help of his businessman dollar billionaire younger brother Hashim Djojohadikusumo, Prabowo started the right-wing Gerakan Indonesia Raya (Gerindra - the Great Indonesia Movement) party as a vehicle for his political career after established parties rejected his approaches.

The cashiered former general lost three times, once as a vice president candidate and twice as president against Jokowi, but has now triumphed.

What sort of leader of 280 million people will he be?  Australian Pat Walsh, an advisor to East Timor's CAVR (Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação), has no doubt.

In a scarifying review, the co-founder of the prestigious Australian magazine Inside Indonesia concluded that Prabowo was not a fit and proper person to be president.

"(He) …shared responsibility for the fate of hundreds of civilians who endured crimes …that offends the very essence of civilised humanity included starvation, forced displacement (including of children), rape, torture, killings, imprisonment and forced displacement."

This was not the image seen by voters.  Instead, they were presented with a baby-faced gemoy (cute) grandpa, though the divorcee’s only son is childless and lives in Europe as a fashion designer.  A triumph of jolly cartoons over serious policy and the future of the world's fourth-largest nation.

The VP role now held by Gibran is dubbed ban serep (spare tyre) in Indonesian slang, a powerless ceremonial job.  More than half the voters are millennials or belong to Gen Z, so whether Gibran will lie back and enjoy the role or want to be involved and challenge his arrogant boss is one to watch.

Contrary to the imagery, the hot-tempered authoritarian  Prabowo is not cute, says Professor Tim Lindsey of Melbourne University:

“He has repeatedly said Indonesia’s democratic system is not working and the country should return to its original 1945 Constitution. This would mean unraveling most of the reforms introduced since Soeharto fell …

“Among other things, Indonesia’s charter of human rights would go, as would the Constitutional Court. The courts would no longer be independent, direct presidential elections would end, the two-term presidential limit would go and the president could again control the legislature.”

Little is known in Indonesia of Prabowo's past, where a sanitised version of history is taught in schools.  This shows the gallant military fighting for freedom in the 1940s, then defeating godless Communism in the 60s and recovering the former Portuguese colony of  East Timor, now Timor L'Este, in the 70s.

Prabowo had been involved in four tours of duty on the island.  According to Amnesty International, the invasion and occupation cost the lives of  250,000 civilians from violence or starvation during Indonesia’s 24-year control.

"A truth-telling process in Indonesia is needed," wrote Walsh.  "The deeply regrettable downside of this overdue process in Indonesia is that a person with demonstrated disregard for the rule of law, of both the domestic and international kind and regarded by many as a war criminal, may be elected Indonesia's next president."

But he has been elected by the people in a process that may be the last. Commented Lindsey:  “Indonesia’s fragile democratic system may be the next thing he reinvents – or, more likely, dismantles.”

Canberra will have to accept Prabowo and afford him status - that’s international diplomacy.  It also needs Indonesia to help relationships with China that has been doing big business in Indonesia, particularly with loans and labour for nickel smelters, toll roads and fast rail.

That doesn’t mean the Australian human rights lobby and historians will not rally against the new President. If he does visit Canberra, watch out for the protests now not happening in Jakarta.

## 

First published in Michael West Media, 15 February 2024: https://michaelwest.com.au/indonesia-elects-a-new-president-prabowosubianto/

THE END OF THE ROAD TO A FAIRER SOCIETY

FAREWELL DEMOCRACY 

There’ll be a good indicator - if not a firm result - by the time most Australians go to bed tonight.  Then we’ll know if the ferociously ambitious Prabowo Subianto - Indonesia’s political psychopath   - will be running the nation next door and booting out democracy.

The Economist Intelligence Unit has consistently tagged Indonesia as a “flawed democracy”, behind Malaysia and the Philippines.  Whatever the analysts think today the Republic will be holding a monster - reportedly the world’s biggest one-day election.

Imagine your local supermarket eleven times larger.  Every shelf is sagging,  every product in abundance - only the labels differ with few ingredients listed.  Now transfer the lot onto social media and the street, smothering anything green with vinyl advertising. Presto - the 2024 Indonesian election campaign.

It’s a vast country but only three sets of candidates (all male, Muslim and Javanese) are slugging it out on 14 February to run the Republic for the next five years.  So what’s the big deal?

Forgotten by the AI headliners is that this isn't solely about former Jakarta Governor Dr Anies Baswedan, cashiered one-time general Prabowo Subianto and Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, all desperate to be El Supremo.  

Thousands of  Indonesians are standing for a cluster of 20,000 national, regional and local seats next Wednesday. From the banners of their fizzogs, it seems half the citizenry has its hat in the ring - though it’s only 200,000.  

With a population jostling 280 million, Indonesia is the world’s fourth largest country after India, China and the US - and it’s right next door. Be warned, says Canberra -  don’t go if you don’t know; millions will be on the streets and not all will be happy.

Although all candidates are smiling on their placards, that's not everyone's default position. Fist-waving and finger-pointing are essential. The few women have lots of lippy and jilbabs (headscarves);  the young guys bruised foreheads supposedly from head-banging while praying in hard-floor mosques.  

In religious Indonesia, where all citizens must belong to one of six government-approved faiths, it seems that piety is the main qualification for secular administration.

Looking at their forced grins the hopefuls would be happier sneering and snarling, which is how they’ll behave once they lose - as most will. Hoaxes abound,

Citizens need to be 17 or over though underage marrieds can also visit the ballot box in their street or village.  Voting is often in the open and there are so many booths the show is often done and dusted by noon. The system is first-pass-the-post.

Around 205 million have registered.  Based on earlier figures 80 per cent should turn up, though voting isn’t compulsory. Purple ink on the finger shows you’ve already been to a booth. Social media is full of tales of bribes, but your correspondent has been unable to verify.

The cost is enormous and most of the big backers are Indonesian businesses.  One stab is US $ 500 million, but that seems far too low.  For an analysis, go here.

Half the population is under 40 and the prospective legislators have little idea on how to reach a tech-savvy generation with no knowledge of last century’s authoritarian politics and ruthless dealings with dissidents.  Much has been spent on cartoon characters and silly memes, a real insult to thoughtful voters.  Sadly they’re the minority.

The formal handover of power will take place in October.  Till then the admin of President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo will continue.

Of the present 575 polis in the Big House, many come from little parties who back Jokowi.  That means he does what he likes and the only opposition comes from NGOs in rented offices with leaky ceilings and shared toilets.

Fortunately Jokowi has been relatively benign, good on toll roads, factories and exports, poor on human rights. He has an 80 per cent approval rate - or did until he backed his eldest son Gibran Rakabuming to stand with Prabowo, earning widespread wrath from academics.

His successor will inherit a steady slackening of enthusiasm for democracy.

With ten or more individuals chasing every seat in the regions and districts, how does the elector make sense of it all?  Best just follow the simper or smirker you like best, or shove a hole through your party's choice using the nail supplied - a left-over from the days when many electors were illiterate. (The rate now is around one per cent and decreasing,)

The Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan  (Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle) is the only stand-alone as it scored more than 20 per cent of the votes last time.

The others have formed coalitions, diluting their impact and independence, but ensuring a slice of the pizza cut by the winner.

Monday and yesterday were campaign-free, giving candidates a breather and the chance of a clean up.

The candidate pairs - pres and vice - need a simple majority to win. At this stage it's reckoned no one will get that score, meaning a run-off by the top two on 26 June.  But check tonight.

 ##

Duncan Graham has an MPhil degree, a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He lives in East Java.

 

 First published 14 February 2024 in Pearls & Irritations; https://johnmenadue.com/farewell-democracy-link-b-pic-prabowo-subianto/

THE YEAR OF VOTING FEARFULLY

 COMING SOON - D(ECISION) DAY

Image:  MWM

Tis the season to be electing: In 2024  four billion will pick leaders in the US, India, South Africa and 70 others. Among the first is Indonesia. Duncan Graham is there.

A week to go. Exhaustion is obvious and frustration rising after the fifth and final TV debate on Sunday, long on rhetoric, brief on implementation, negligible on costing.  Much was incontestable, like support for the disabled and better maternal care.

On Valentine's Day Indonesians are set to select who'll run the world's third-largest democracy from a field of three candidates and their sidekicks.  Our deeply religious neighbour is technically secular but has more Muslims than any other nation.

So far there’s been no reported violence. This could change if the hoaxes take root and hates grow.

Indonesians like to think they control their emotions. Not always. In 1965 an army-organised genocide took half a million lives. Riots in 1974, 84, 94 and 99 killed thousands. The English word ‘amok’ comes from the region.

Cashiered former general Prabowo Subianto, a hard-right, my-destiny candidate and the man most likely to light the fuse if he loses, said earlier:

“Indonesians can very quickly turn to violence. (It’s) something we would like to address, to control, and to manage. But it is there: fighting between families … villages …tribes …ethnic groups, and finally fighting between religions.”

The ring of fire isn’t confined to volcanic eruptions.

Who are the voters?

Academic research estimates that 60 per cent of the 204 million eligible voters are in the 17–39 age demographic.

The campaign has revealed separate sets of millennials and Gen Zs.  The thoughtful ones are real but invisible to the politicians who want their votes, though not their questions.

The other mob is imagined: Calcified by shock media images the candidates see gadget-crazed narcissists, careless about the direction of their nation so easily distracted with bread and circuses.

They get served trite slogans and cartoons (the speciality of Prabowo’s campaign ), plus K-Pop from supporters of former Jakarta Governor Dr Anies Baswedan.  He benefits, but being an academic denies personal involvement in such base tactics. Running a Republic requires gravitas.

One corny stunt involved choppering a sizeable white shirt above Jakarta’s Hotel Indonesia roundabout, supposedly implying former Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo has broad shoulders to carry the load. It looked like a heavenly Hills Hoist.

The torrent of money suggests donors expect handsome rewards for their investments. Presidents can appoint ministers from outside politics. At a rough count, Prabowo is outspending his competitors two to one. As in Australia figures are fuzzy.

Contempt for customers is bad for business and representative government, but hey - who cares?  Snatch their vote, then shove ‘em back in steerage for five more years.

But teens grow up.

Indonesian education is in a bad way, but it’s been worse.  The internet has demolished school walls and excited curiosity. Kids are discovering the history road they’ve been led down is potholed with missing facts.  Like ours and the frontier wars.

Most want the forests and rivers saved and cleansed but few polis do green - they prefer smokestacks. Respondents to a uni survey last year sought declaration of a climate emergency; sixty per cent thought the government hadn't handled the crisis properly.

Nothing happened.

Problems with the ump

Hopes for intelligent policy debate haven’t been helped by Indonesia’s Electoral Commission (Komisi Pemilihan Umum KPU) an agency with a grubby past.  In 2005 its chair, Monash Uni-educated  Dr Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin, was whacked with huge fines and seven years in jail for taking bribes.

The KPU presently smells fresh, extra important because it's staging an event far more complex than anything attempted by Canberra.   In the 2019  poll 7.4 million election workers were employed. Around 500 reportedly died from stress-related sicknesses.

Politics is a blood sport;  the KPU, fearful of reputational assaults, sought friendly chats. Questions in its TV debates came from ponderous academics and mostly men, not bristly journos.

The public wants gladiators, but adrenalin drains away through a 30-minute prelude of prayers, the national anthem, the KPU song (Choose for Indonesia), handshakes and formulaic speeches.  The candidates’  times are truncated, their canvas contained.

When the piles and fart-cure commercials (metaphors too apt to ignore) shown in the breaks are more credible than the candidates’ pledges of clean government, it’s clear the stench is ineradicable without extreme surgery.  That doctor’s not on-call.

Graft stinks as pungently as it did a decade ago when new President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo promised a fix. It’s repelling the ethical investors his regime yearns to lure: The latest Corruption Perception Index elbowed Indonesia down from 110 to 115 out of 180 countries measured.

Economy up - and down

Left-wing academic and Australian author Max Lane reckons Indonesian politics isn't based on economic or social divides but on how the show has been staged: "Governance built around dynastic power, cronyism, and a right to rule presumed by members of the New Order elite.”  

That was the 1966 - 1998 autocracy of General Soeharto. Although repressive the economy expanded at an average of 7.1 per cent. Then came democracy and growth crashed to 5.2 per cent.

“This is an irony or paradox, that in an era when political freedom was much curtailed, the economy grew at a rapid clip, while poverty levels fell away much more quickly than in the democratic era,” said ANU economist Dr Hal Hill. An awkward truth - dictators can get things done.

There’s been a flurry of vote buying. Days out from the election Jokowi, whose son Gibran Rakabuming is Prabowo’s VP pick,  announced welfare payments for the poor (a cohort larger than the population of Australia), plus wage rises for soldiers and civil servants.

More subtle are the social media finger salutes supposed to send secret messages of support but look more like an Aussie F*** Off signal.  Promises get pencilled on face wipes.  

Prabowo’s idea to give 83 million school kids free milk is already sour.  There aren’t enough dairy cows in the tropical nation, and lactose intolerance is widespread.

Clown-of-the-month award (gender studies) goes to VP hopeful Mohammad Mahfud Mahmodin (Mahfud MD) blaming women for men’s corruption, reviving the New Order’s “State Ibuism.

This specified women's duties as breeder, feeder, scrubber and carer. If the kids go off the rails it's  Mum's fault, added Mahfud.  The Legal and Security Minister later ‘clarified’ his comments.  By then modern couples had gone elsewhere.

The polls are sus because sample sizes are too small, but suggest no one candidate getting more than half the votes.  If right there’ll be a run-off on 26 June.

Australians should rest easy with either of the former governors winning, though much will depend on the new foreign minister.  Anies has assured his neighbours -  “no risk”.

Indonesian democracy is already wounded. Elections are “considered neither free nor fair, (because) many other prerequisites … such as freedom of speech and association are absent” reports the Economist Intelligence Unit. 

A Prabowo win will put democracy out of its misery.

 

Duncan Graham has an MPhil degree, a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He lives in East Java.

First published in Michael West Media, 8 February 2024: https://michaelwest.com.au/indonesia-elections-jokowi-favourites/

I ADORE YOUR ELECTION

 LOVE ME, LOVE MY VOTE                                                         Duncan Graham

Pledges of love eternal flourishing on social media are like the vast east coast plains of normally arid Australia, saturated by summer storms,

As you read this billions of flowers will begin to bloom, the tiny seeds lying still for months, years sometimes, waiting patiently for the blessings of rain. Readers wanting to enjoy this joyous sight should not delay, for the vengeful parching sun will soon return and all will wither.

This is how it is with the election maturing on the day we also celebrate the passing of the third-century Saint Valentine. Sad story: The Roman was allegedly beaten up and beheaded because he wouldn’t renounce his faith.

That adverb has been added because no one knows for sure how the martyr left the world in his early 40s. No dashboard vision or CCTV.

He might have come home late with an unusual shade of lipstick on his toga collar - and then been dished with a frying pan by a furious Mrs V.  In those days kitchen utensils were made of cast iron.

We only know that the icon of affection is no longer with us, though the love he sowed springs still.

And so it is with the Big Ballot, a mass wooing of more than 200 million eligibles in the world’s third largest democracy (after India and the US).

Whatever their origins, Indonesia Expat aficionados have probably never seen such a mass of smiling, charming men and women seeking their affection, grinning from the crowded sidewalks.  Many even try to wave down motorists  by flapping faces with their undress of ripped vinyl.

They’re hoping, praying even, that those not already engaged or even wedded to one party will bestow their favours. Cosmopolitan readers will have encountered similar scenes elsewhere - in Singapore’s Geylang district for example - where the lights are red.

Sadly political polygamy is outlawed. The seducers’ faces are so angelic, their ambitions so pure, most of us will be tempted to go for the lot.

Satisfaction comes through shoving a nail on a hard stick provided by the Komisi Pemilihan Umum (Electoral Commission) straight through their smiles.

No lukewarm pencil ticks as in overseas systems. In Indonesia we want to be certain come the count. Voting across the archipelago is a holey experience.

If only 14 February would last forever. Then the candidates could bestow upon us their airbrushed beauty and handsome features, love eternal.  The dream would never fade.

Alas, the universal truth: Nothing lasts forever.  Fortunately that includes the ink on the finger. Tip: Avoid embracing your beloved immediately after exercising your right to do so. Blue lips are for cold climes and have yet to become trendy in the tropics.

The lawmakers were wise to restrict entrance to the cardboard booths to those above 17. By that age innocence has already been flayed, like the body of Vin the Unlucky at the gate of Via Flaminia where the stones were splashed red.

Electors will not be so inexperienced in life to be startled and distraught on the night of the results. That’s when they’ll discover the once controlled emotions of their swains, chosen for their sweetness and piety, have now turned to hate.  Losing is not for the gentle.

Shakespeare is supposed to have said: “Love me or hate me, both are in my favour. If you love me, I’ll always be in your heart. If you hate me, I’ll always be in your mind’.

The source for this aphorism is unlikely to have been the Bard. The author most likely was a copywriter for a card company that makes a whopping profit in mid-February then nothing for the next 51 weeks - much like the desert blooms Down Under.

We doubt the English language’s greatest sonneteer would scribble such shallow lines -and in any case ‘you’ and ‘your’ were not in his lexicon. 

 ‘Thee’ and ‘thine’ carry more intimacy. Anyone today who heard such words whispered in the shadows of Dunia Fantasi would probably look for a satpam to escort her out of the park and into a GoCar

Let’s keep an open mind: If WS did dip his quill into a well of bad rhyme it must have been for want of a quick guinea from a card publisher scratching for enough cliches when demand was greatest. 

Last year the real or imagined moral codes of the City Fathers and Mothers of Malang in Central East Java were shocked to the core. They’d noticed couples were using the sidewalk benches on Jalan Ijen to enjoy the Almighty’s gifts of gender difference, so ordered bamboo sticks strapped across the seats.

When this didn’t deter, threats were made to demolish the street furniture.  Fortunately less jealous and more mature lawmakers pointed out that many of the people using the facilities were the weary elderly.

Some were seen holding hands as they’d done for decades of marriage, proving that love will stay whatever the politicians say - or betray.

Happy Valentine’s Day - and don’t forget to exercise your vote.

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First published in Indonesia Expat, 7 February 2024: 

https://online.fliphtml5.com/qinqh/zedc/index.html#p=15