THANE OF JAVA, KING HEREAFTER

FATHER KNOWS BEST?  NOT THIS TIME

Pic:  The Jakarta Post

How comfy the throne, how rapid the change; a humble Republican from a riverbank shack is now plotting to be King of Indonesia with a regal family as courtiers.

Young Indonesians have had enough of outgoing President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo's blatant nepotism, the rise of dynastic politics and a return of the oligarchs.

Furious protests in major cities last week sent the market trembling and forced the Parliament to adjourn. TV news showed police firing tear gas and water cannons as the crowds surged and spotfires flared.

Less than two months before disgraced former general Prabowo Subianto takes office in the land next door, students, workers and idealists are starting to snarl.

Tens of thousands have protested against legislators’ contempt for electors; they’re  demanding respect for representative government and the rule of law - and so far they’re succeeding.

The world’s third largest democracy (after India and the US) has allowed the principles of equality and equity to be slowly trampled during the leader’s past two five-year terms.

The crisis is a reminder that 19^th   century British politician Lord Acton’s quote is ageless and universal: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Several universities in Indonesia have reportedly issued petitions criticising the current state of democracy and calling on Jokowi to maintain state ethics.

Indonesia’s labelled a ‘flawed democracy’ by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s World Democracy Index. This ranks the Republic at 52;  the Nordic nations and NZ lead the 167 states surveyed.

Last Thursday more than 3,000 police were hopelessly outnumbered by ten times that number in Jakarta as masses condemned planned changes to the Republic’s regional election law in a bid to overturn a ruling by the Constitutional Court. There were no reported casualties or arrests.

Comments from the crowd would resonate with young Australians; fist-thrusters  were there  to protest state abuse of democracy, though also fed up with the rising cost of living, low wages, the power of elites and long delays in bureaucrats responding to complaints of inefficiency.

Once again this highly-charged political shemozzle involves the family of the super popular but ultra cunning Jokowi.  He’s trying to cement his legacy by slipping rellies into power and through them maintaining his grip on the state.

After two five-year terms he can't legally remain in office, though pushed to stay by big business backers. They've argued his rule should continue because it’s led to high economic growth (now above five per cent) mainly through Chinese-funded infrastructure, mining projects and loans.

Two years ago Jakarta owed Beijing  more than AUD 30 billion - a figure now believed to be much higher.

This week the  Court decided candidates in local elections must be at least 30 years old.  That ruled out Jokowi’s youngest son  Kaesang Pangarep, 29, from having his name on a ticket in the November poll.

Jokowi rustled up backers and rapidly garnered support from eight parties already in his pocket. They whipped up new bills a week before  the  candidate registration period to let  Kaesang stand.

Earlier this year the Court, then run by Jokowi’s brother-in-law  Anwar Usman, judged that citizens under 40 could stand for high office if they had prior government experience.

This allowed Jokowi’s eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka, 36, the former mayor of Solo in Central Java, to offer himself to the public in a three-party race as sidekick to Prabowo.

In February the pair scored 58 per cent in the general election. Prabowo is now the president-elect and Gibran vice president-elect.

Chief Justice  Anwar was reprimanded by his colleagues for - among other things - committing a “serious violation of the code of ethics” and failing to be impartial.

Daddy's boy Gibran

He was demoted but the Court’s decision was upheld.

This month it all got too much with Daddy’s bid to get Kaesang onto the public teat. Another princeling, son-in-law Muhammad Bobby Nasution, 31, is already suckling as mayor of Medan, the archipelago’s fourth biggest city.

The eager legislators said  right-oh boss, swift  passage of contentious laws coming up. But after rocks were chucked and attempts on Thursday to tear down the gates of Parliament, attitudes changed.

Lawmakers remembered the 1998 riots which tore down second president Soeharto after 32 years of autocracy, so suddenly discovered caution.

Jokowi sought to soothe the crowds, not in person but through a video: "We respect the authority and decisions of each state institution. This is a normal constitutional process that takes place within our state institutions."

No one was fooled.   The politicians peered out through barred windows and concluded keeping the status quo might be safest.

Deputy House Speaker Sufmi Dasco Ahmad was reported by Reuters as ruling out changes in the law, claiming insufficient time for debate.

In an Instagram posting, former Ambassador to the US Dr Dino Patti Djalal, who now runs a foreign policy think tank said attempts by politicians to bypass the Constitutional Court "have harmed the quality and credibility of Indonesian democracy.

"This has shaken people's trust in state institutions and damaged  Indonesia's good name in the international community.

“We are worried to see the rampant indications of politicization of law, where legal cases are used as tools to secure the political agenda of certain parties. We must all work hard to fight corruption, collusion, conspiracy, and nepotism.”

Jokowi’s replacement Prabowo has a reputation for being a hard-right disciplinarian. At an investment forum this year after winning the Presidency  he complained that democracy is “really, very, very tiring … messy and costly,”

Winston Churchill was more articulate.  He’s supposed to have said: “Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those others.”

Once in the top chair frustrated Prabowo might try “those others”.  Instead of placatory words maybe rifle butts and mass arrests.  Tense times loom.

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  First published in Pearls & Irritations,27 August 2024:  https://johnmenadue.com/father-knows-best-not-this-time/

LOOKS LIKE PYONGYANG? NO, IT'S JAKARTA

CONTROL THE PAST -THEN THE FUTURE. THUS SPOKE ORWELL            

It’s been argued that Indonesia’s next President may be good for Australian interests; for domestic progressives that’s doubtful.

It’s not just computer apps that get updated. Indonesian President Joko ’Jokowi’ Widodo is fiddling with the future by rewriting history and binning the past.  It’s a task made easier by voter ignorance.

The remake started when Jokowi made Prabowo Subianto - his main rival in the 2014 and 2019 elections - Minister of Defence.  That gave the loser a public platform as part of the government.

Some saw this as a political masterstroke based on the writings of Chinese General Sun Tzu  (probably 544–496 BC) of keeping friends close but enemies closer.

The move pruned Prabowo as the only real thorn, for by then Jokowi had recruited small parties into his coalition.

Prabowo’s promotion also gave the notoriously inflammable wannabe poli something to do.  He could now openly talk guns and bombs with men in uniform as he did before he was cashiered.

That was amid the 1998 revolution which saw the authoritarian Soeharto - also a former general - quit the presidency after 32 years of despotic rule.

The revival of democracy wasn't a good year for Prabowo. He was stripped of his ribbons for alleged insubordination after Soeharto's replacement Vice President Bacharuddin Jusuf (BJ) Habibie took control.

Prabowo then fled to exile in Jordan following his divorce from Soeharto's daughter Siti. He returned in 2008 after his former father-in-law died and tried to get into politics failing at every attempt to join an established party.

So he started his own and called it Gerindra (Great Indonesia Movement). It now has 86 seats in the House of Representatives where it’s the third largest party and its leader president-elect.

 It’s labelled right-wing by the Western media but that’s too facile. It’s certainly bombastically nationalistic and carries a whiff of  fascism.

In this year's February election, Prabowo won convincingly against two opponents with 55 per cent of the popular vote.  (The Constitution prevented Jokowi from standing again for a third term.)

Now Prabowo’s backers are erasing mentions of his alleged human rights abuses that saw him refused entry to the US and Australia earlier this century.

The bans have been quietly lifted. Other subtle changes are underway, particularly descriptors of  Prabowo as ‘general, retired’, even used by the supposedly neutral academic journal The Conversation.

Wikipedia now calls him a 'retired honorary army general.' In the partisan Indonesian media this title has become commonplace with no mention of past villainies, like the seizure of 13 student protesters by his commandos and never seen again.

Since 2007 their parents have protested silently every Thursday before the State Palace in Jakarta demanding to know what happened to their sons.  Jokowi once promised an inquiry.  That hasn’t happened.

Prabowo responds that he’s never been charged, which is true, and that it’s time to focus on the future. That’s the standard line for all who want no probe into their past.

Now Jokowi has gone further, reinstating his successor as a four-star honorary general. When kicked out of the army in 1998 he had three stars.

NGOs have taken legal action to rescind the award but neither Prabowo nor Jokowi fronted the court.

Next came the police with their highest honour, Bintang Bhayangkara Utama (star of meritorious service ) “awarded to individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to advancing the Indonesian National Police, going beyond their duties.”  

Curious praise: A 2022 survey showed the police ranked as the least trusted of all law enforcement bodies. Last century the army ran the police.  Separation has been incomplete; soldiers can often be seen with cops acting as security at sporting events.  

How can all this happen in a society with easy Internet access to Prabowo's bio?   It's a question also being asked in the US of Trump, where Republican diehards ignore his lies and failings to win power.

It's not that bad yet in Indonesia.  One theory about support for Prabowo blames 32 years of bibliophobia when Soeharto ruled;  rote learning at schools and widespread censorship led electors away from critical thinking and into blandly accepting party propaganda.  

As Orwell wrote: “Who controls the past controls the future.”

Completing 12 years of education for 50 million students is supposed to be mandatory,  six at primary and three years each at middle and high school.

Public schooling is allegedly free for the first two stages but uniforms and subtle add-ons make education expensive. Many kids drop out in the mid-teens to work or help their parents.

A 2018 report by the Lowy Institute claimed the system had been a "high-volume, low-quality enterprise that has fallen well short of the country's ambitions for an internationally competitive system".

It blamed not enough money and poor management but "most fundamentally a matter of politics and power."

There’s little evidence the situation has improved, though the public may be ahead of their leaders. A Kompas newspaper survey claimed more than 88 per cent of respondents agreed that "political education was crucial to be pursued as a section strengthening democracy.”

By the time Prabowo,73, is inaugurated on 20 October the world's third-largest democracy will welcome its eighth president.  By then the embarrassing version will have been erased.

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  First published in Pearls & Irritations, 29 June 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/control-the-past-then-the-future-thus-spoke-orwell/

MR CLEAN GETS DIRTY

 

 The making of a dynasty and unmaking of democracy                    

 

Indonesian politics are played hard. Corruption is a given, but a devious ploy to keep the present president wielding power has backfired with wholesale anger against a gross display of law-bending and nepotism. 

 

In one sly move, President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, 62, has lost the backing of the moderate mainstream led by the Republic’s leading public intellectual, Goenawan Mohamad.(below, left)

 

The writer, poet and campaigner against despots was not a friend, but an open supporter and organiser for Jokowi in the 2014 and 2019 elections.

 

Past endorsements by Goenawan, 82, have helped sustain the President’s Mr Clean image at home and overseas in a country rotten with graft.  When first elected he was seen as an ‘avatar of reform’.

 

Jokowi had no links to the military, political Islam, big business or regal families yet got to the top as a darling because he was a competent, humble, small-town man of the people. He’s been dazzlingly popular with big business and the wee folk.

 

Then to widespread dismay came a push to extend his Constitutionally-limited two terms in power. When this failed he turned to family to remain as a dahlang - puppet master.

 

The tactic involved approving the nomination of his eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka, 36, as a vice president candidate. Not for his father’s party but his opponent’s.

 

This was altogether too much for Goenawan.

 

‘Jokowi should have retired in dignity,’ the veteran press freedom activist and founder-editor of Tempo magazine told Michael West Media.  ‘He did much that was good; we have free health care, better infrastructure and much more. The country is safe and the economy is growing. 

 

 ‘He once had my respect. No longer. I do not support politics being practised without values.’

 

Gibran is on the ticket of disgraced former general Prabowo Subianto, a former bitter rival to Jokowi in previous elections and head of the right-wing Gerindra (Great Indonesia Movement) party.  

 

Posters promoting Prabowo featuring Jokowi and Gibran are already on the streets, some confusingly captioned ‘Jokowi Party’. This is like having Albanese validate  Dutton as next PM.

 

To get in the running Gibran had to persuade the Constitutional Court to make an exception to the rule limiting the VP role to the over-40s.

 

This month the court ruled five to four in his favour. One of the assenting judges is the applicant’s uncle. The Australian-educated Gibran was formerly mayor of a small Central Java town, a position previously held by his father.

 

In an open letter to the President and published this month Goenawan wrote: ‘The sense of justice is violated, the agreed rules are betrayed … because the person we trusted turns out to be deceitful.

 

‘In 2022 I said Jokowi was the best president in Indonesian history until now.

 

‘But in 2023, I am reminded of the classic wisdom, that a leader who is admired and praised is a man who is tempted. Power and praise are evil for the person on the throne, and addictive.’

 

 Prabowo expected that recruiting Gibran would rocket him to the front. But Goenawan’s surprise attack on Jokowi and public dismay at the fall of their idol and what appears to be judicial activism could well shoot down Prabowo’s chances.

 

In Indonesian affairs, there’s rarely a separation of faith and politics. Candidates’ personalities, families and quirks carry more clout than policy. 

 

The three main contestants are all male, Muslim and from Java.  They want  to rule a nation of close to 278 million (of course half are women) from 1,300 ethnic groups spread across the world’s largest archipelagic state of 6,000 inhabited islands.

 

The number of Christians in Indonesia almost equals the total population of Australia.

 

The campaign is revving hard and the people next door are being chased  down with promises of El Dorado and sometimes hard cash for their 14 February vote. The world’s largest single-day election for 20,000 national and local parliament seats is held once every five years. 

 

Voting isn’t compulsory but in 2019 the turnout of 83 per cent from 191 million registered voters suggests Indonesians like democracy (or a mid-week holiday), though the toll was awful; 456 election officers, 91 supervisory agents and 22 police officers died, mainly from stress and exhaustion. Seven million worked on the poll.

 

 

The election outcome will be critical for Australian trade and regional security, maybe even tourism if a fundamentalist candidate wins and diplomatic relations are threatened by xenophobic politicians.

 

Indonesian politics don’t follow the Westminster model of government and opposition.

Switches are rarely made on matters of principle. Minor parties get seduced into coalition with promises of access to ministries and the chance to reward donors, so opposition withers.

 

Although Indonesia became a republic in 1945, Javanese oligarchs flaunt their connections to the Sultanates of colonial days. Prabowo adds aristocracy to his credentials for office.

 

Deleted from the CV are these facts: He was kicked out of the military in 1998 for disobeying orders and fled to exile in Jordan. For several years his human rights record had him banned entry to the US where he’d studied the arts of killing at Fort Benning.

 

He was also booted from his 15-year marriage to Soeharto’s daughter  Siti Hediati Hariyadi. Their only son Didit Hediprasetyo is a fashion designer in Germany and is widely whispered to be gay.

 

So what? Only that last year his homeland legislators made adult consensual same-sex conduct illegal, bucking the international trend.

 

Now 72 Prabowo seems nothing like a general, apart from the strut and arrogance. He’s plump and short and it shows when standing close to his slim, young recruit.

 

Hung with the albatrosses of disgrace, divorce, and ‘deviancy’ should have made Prabowo politically impotent.  The shame of losing by ten percentage points to Jokowi  in the 2019 contest, was then followed by Trump-like tantrums with accusations, appeals and riots. Eight people died and more than 600 were injured.

 

Then Jokowi made him Minister for Defence, following the Lyndon  Johnson fugly wisdom that it’s ‘better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.’ 

That gave him a platform and an equal chance, say pollsters. He’s a US dollar multi-billionaire backed by a tame media, keen to protect the nation from multiple imagined threats.

 

These include the claim that Australia plans to Balkanise the ‘Unity State’ to plunder its mineral riches, and treating a US sci-fi fantasy about a 2030 apocalypse as a fact.

 

Like the referendum debate, the slur-throwers care only that some lies will stick to the blanket of indifference and confusion.

 

Prabowo changes his colours like the Pacific tree frog. One commentator put it succinctly: ‘He appeared as a patriotic soldier in his 2004 bid for the vice presidency (representing yet another party) … then as a rabble-rousing nationalist in the 2014 presidential race, before polarising the public as an aggrieved Islamist in 2019.’

Ganjar Pranowo with author

 

 Now he’s hunting the youth vote through social media and having Jokowi’s son as a subaltern. His main opponent is Ganjar Pranowo, 54.

 

Logically (by Western standards) the former Central Java Provincial Governor should succeed Jokowi as both are in the mildly left populist Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI_P) which has a majority (128 of 575) seats in the Legislative Assembly.

 

Their party boss is Megawati, daughter of founding president Soekarno.

 

Earlier this year she ordered Ganjar to reject Israel’s national team in the Under-20 World Cup football (soccer) tournament. Hosting rights were then lost to Argentina. Millions were angered by their sport being kicked by politicians. Seventeen to 39-year-olds make up half the voters.

 

Logically this cohort should back former Jakarta Governor Dr Anies Baswedan who appears to be the most acceptable candidate for Australia. He often visits so knows our views and values. 

 

He’s running behind largely because he hasn’t been blessed by Jokowi. The two men fell out when the reformist and ambitious Anies was Minister for Education and seen as a threat.

 

The US-educated former rector of a liberal university has Arab ancestry so pulls the Islamic vote.  Indonesia is a secular state but has the world’s largest population of Muslims. 

 

Ganjar is deft at handling controversy. In a 2019 podcast, he admitted to watching porn, risky in an uptight nation that bans sites like Tumblr and Vimeo.

 

He told an interviewer: ‘If I watch porn, what is wrong with that? I like it. I am an adult. I have a wife,’ Ganjar played the story for laughs suggesting it was a publicity stunt to tickle the lads.

 

The real porn stars are the power-crazed contenders raping democracy.

 

From now to Valentine’s Day there’ll be much hate and little love on the hustings. 

 

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First published in Michael West Media, 24 October 2023: https://michaelwest.com.au/indonesian-elections-the-making-of-a-dynasty-and-unmaking-of-democracy/

THE GREEN CITY IS HEADING INTO THE RED

  

A white elephant in the jungle needs a diet of dollars       

 

    

 

Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo is scheduled to visit Australia next month, his fifth and likely last trip south as Indonesian President. He’ll be talking trade, querying the AUKUS deal and again urging better visa access for his citizens. However, there’s an extra item in his baggage.

 

The word from Canberra is that Jokowi will be shopping for  lithium for his nation’s Chinese-brand electric vehicle factories in a bid to export cars to Australia. But the leader of 275 million people in his second and final five-year term will be driving another agenda, as he does at every opportunity.

 

He wants foreign investors to back a project which he hopes will define his legacy after a decade of running the world’s fourth most populous nation.  His idea is big, ambitious and risky - shifting the overcrowded, over-polluted and over-stressed capital from Java 1,300 km north to Borneo. 

 

Indonesia holds 73 per cent of the island which it calls Kalimantan.  The rest belongs to Malaysia and Brunei.

 

Jakarta’s population is 11 million, triple that number if the greater metro area is included. Java has 145 million, Kalimantan 17.5. Indonesia’s population growth rate is 1.1 per cent.

 

The case for taking the weight off Jakarta - literally because it’s sinking in parts at 25 cm a year - is watertight.  But why not build new in Java, particularly as it’s reported Jakarta will remain the nation’s commercial and financial centre? 

 

The resolute president explained the selection was not by geography but geometry: ‘We want the relocation to demonstrate the idea of Indonesia-centric instead of Java-centric. We have drawn a line from west to east, north to south, and found the centre at East Kalimantan province.’  That’s a short walk from the equator.

 

 Maybe he should have checked next door in more practical Malaysia where the administrative and judicial centre is Putrajaya. It’s only 32 klicks south of Kuala Lumpur which remains the nation’s capital. The 1999 shift was pushed by some of  the same factors now threatening Jakarta.

 

Jokowi consulted many about his vision but Queensland University planner Dr Dorina Pojani, author of Trophy Cities, was not among them:

 

‘The new capitals created since 1900 have been, for the most part, great planning disasters. They are dreary, overpowering, under-serviced, wasteful and unaffordable. In short, they are extremely expensive mistakes.’

 

Her book claims that in 1900, the world had only around 40 capitals; now there are nearly 200 with five more planned.

 

Work on the new city of Nusantara (‘archipelago’ in Sanskrit) has so far been funded by the State. But if the US $ 35 billion-plus project is to rise from a 56,000-hectare site in the jungle by next year it will need megatonnes of foreign fiscal fertilisers.

 

Through past visits by Australian bankers Jokowi knows of his southern neighbour’s cashed-up super funds (currently holding $ 3.5 trillion), so is offering tax holidays, deductions, zero withholding tax and many other goodies. There are reports that the project already has ‘commitments’ from investors in UAE, China, South Korea, and Taiwan and ‘offers’ from European countries.

 

However no independent verifiable details from the Ibu Kota Nusantara (capital city authority) as the agency refuses to respond to inquiries by this correspondent or allow a site visit.

 

So we don’t know whether these are hard deals or daydreams. Probably  the latter; if ink had dried on watertight contracts then Jakarta would be crowing loud so others would dash to the trough.

 

In January 2020 the public was told Japan’s SoftBank Corporation had US $40 billion ready to lend. Staff were sent to peer and ponder before saying no thanks.

 

Late last year the US Bloomberg business website reported: ‘Not one foreign party—state-backed or private—has entered into a binding contract to fund the project.’

 

Potential investors may see a chance to earn hefty returns from building infrastructure and, of course, a grand palace for the next president, but will the elected one  maintain Jokowi’s enthusiasm?

 

There are currently three contenders for the top job. The present leader is Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, a member of Jokowi’s party and said to be in favour of Nusantara. Likewise his rivals, disgraced former general Prabowo Subianto and former Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan.

 

Building the new capital is now law so the project must proceed. But there’s nothing in the legislation about pace, or a clause stating that if money can’t be prised out of foreigners, the ‘city of tomorrow’ has to be given priority over health, education and other demands on the national budget

 

In any future financial crisis Nusantara would be an early sacrifice. The  public servants scheduled to move from their homes, families and friends in Jakarta are not as keen on Nusantara as their boss.

 

Once he’s gone back to his home in Solo, Central Java next year, their opposition will be easier to express. Unlike Australians, Indonesians are reluctant re-locators.

 

The present schedule has 17,000 government workers moving north in 2024 with 60,000 more shifting a year later. All will require homes, schools, hospitals and all the other necessary facilities and services for a modern metropolis.

 

Also needed will be squadrons of small entrepreneurs to care for householders’ needs as they do in Java; they’ll probably seek help to try their luck in a new and uncertain market - an expense outside the present budget.

 

China has been the major investor during Jokowi’s rule, tipping billions of renminbi into toll roads and nickel smelters. These cash generators offer more certain dividends than a possible white elephant.

 

The other worries for Western investors are corruption (Indonesia ranks 110 / 180 on Transparency International’s World Scale  where zero is pure) and the reported shrinking of democracy which includes adherence to the rule of law.

 

All investments in dreams are perilous, but Nusantara looks more disturbing than most. In the July chill of Canberra the normally reserved President will be hard pressed to energise the enthusiasm of Australian fund managers.

First published in Indonesia at Melbourne, 13 June 2023:  https://indonesiaatmelbourne.unimelb.edu.au/indonesias-white-elephant-in-the-jungle-will-be-reared-on-foreign-capital-or-will-it/