WHAT TO DO WITH GRANNY?

 

                                             The old, old problem

There used to be five.  Two have died in the past year, so with just three using wheelchairs and walking frames the street looks less like an archipelagic version of what Australia used to call ‘nursing homes’.  That was before Covid-19 and realising the term was a lie.

In Indonesia there’s no playing with the words because the issue is only just creeping onto the public agenda and the options are few. 

Where to send gran?  How many rellies have extra space and the willingness and time to cope?  The family which draws the short straw may be in for some difficult years.

 As Angelique Chan boss of the Centre for Ageing Research and Education at Singapore’s NU, wrote in The Conversation:

‘Unlike in Western countries like Australia, traditional Asian cultures place a heavy emphasis on filial piety — the expectation children will support their parents in old age ...when families were large, pension schemes unavailable and life expectancy was around 50.

‘Today, however, families in East and Southeast Asia are much smaller, divorce rates and rates of non-marriage are increasing, and fewer adult children are living with their parents.’

In Indonesia the life expectancy is now 67.3 for men and 71.4 for women.  Fifty years ago it was at least ten points lower.  Then the authoritarian administration of General Soeharto (who had six kids) ordered a prolonged and intensive contraception programme with the slogan Dua Anak Cukup ‘two children is enough’. 

There were posters, door knocks, radio shows – even statues built of the ideal couple with the eldest always a boy - and unforeseen consequences. The Republic is now facing the elder-care crisis – not enough kids able to help.

‘Filial piety’ is a soft academic phrase for ‘doing your duty’.  That usually means daughters and DILs, though many couples are now both working and in tiny houses.  An alternative is to hire a live-in maid with the bill picked up by the kids, though many oldies don’t want a stranger in the house eyeing the silver and calling in boyfriends when the boss is asleep.

This is a standard horror story for Indonesian tabloids, in the same group as African gangs bashing pensioners in Melbourne parks.

The new academic term is ‘integrated care’ supporting elders to age in their own homes amongst neighbours they’ve known for decades.

 Six years ago Chan produced research showing people who ‘age in place are happier and have a higher quality of life than those in institutions.’

That appears to be the case in our area, where there’s little government help.  Only former permanent government employees, the military and the few who had a decent private employer scheme, get pensions.  Residents contribute to a funeral fund and visits are arranged to the sick.

(Titik, a hilarious Indonesia short film of this custom is worth watching – it has English subtitles.)

In every kampong and village nearby the aged are on view, sometimes so crippled it seems they should be shut away.  But their presence reminds the kids that they’re living in a total community, not one that’s been cleansed of the disfigured.

The disabled guys (no women) are pushed out of doors by seven.  All are stroke victims.  The next two hours are busy as neighbours head to work and the vegie salesmen, butchers, herbal remedy sellers and travelling fishmongers are most active.

So are the scavengers. They chat to the chair-ridden, pass on the gossip and do small errands.  The little kids-on-wheels whiz too-and-fro, glad for an audience.  Likewise the teenage champions of the soccer field, denied grass so use asphalt expect applause when the balls get kicked between two thongs.

The raconteurs aren’t pushed by a sense of duty.  The exchanges aren’t between the oldie and his bored family, or with overworked foreign staff paid to relate.  They’re not sharing with same-age companions repeating similar gripes, but with fellow battlers of all ages. It helps that the culture is tolerant of tradies, drivers and salesmen taking time to shoot the breeze.

The oldies are also the security cams, calling out to strangers asking where they’re heading, shouting at the occasional speeding motorbike.  In urban Australia this would get a curt or no response – in Indonesia rudeness would invite suspicion for we are all our neighbour’s keepers.

The national language is Indonesian – but it’s the secondary tongue here.  First is a coarse Javanese, and anyone with a different accent gets questioned about their background.

Indonesians reckon it helps community cohesion, but Australians would find it all grossly intrusive.  Though here’s a thought – not all ‘senior citizens’ want to be locked away in a gated environment with magpies trilling from lemon-scented gums and corflutes warning security patrols are active, the selling point for many ‘villages’.

Others want the sounds and smells of the cities where they worked, to see the streets, and interact with all generations.  They fear being burdens, unwanted, discarded. These are the nightmares.  Instead, they are told to fear intruders, so need high walls twixt them and the world.

Singapore is trialling a program called Care Close to Home, partly funded by the government’s Temasek holding company, with a reported asset base of AUD 315 billion.

Its spiel reads the ‘C2H programme supports vulnerable older adults residing in public rental flats. Localised home-based care teams coordinate and provide basic clinical, personal and psychosocial support for enrolled clients.

‘This research aims to evaluate C2H effectiveness in maintaining the intrinsic capacity and functional ability of older adults to age well in the community. Findings from the study will provide the necessary inputs for the ongoing development of current interventions.’

Australia has done well to contain the coronavirus, with (so far) 27,500 cases and 907 deaths.  (Singapore (pop 5.6 million) has had 60,000 cases and 28 deaths)

Outrageously around 73 per cent of Australian deaths have been among the elderly infected in ‘homes’ where they were housed by their families expecting safety.  The anguish being felt by relatives who organised their parents’ relocation for what seemed fine reasons at the time, must be gnawing.

Every culture handles ageing differently (ours seems to be screwing for corporate profit) but in the search for a replacement it’s worth the Royal Commission into Aged Care looking elsewhere should we get moved to retrieve the basic principle of bringing the last generation back into total society. 

That’s where they are here in Indonesia. It’s called Gotong Royong, or community self-help, an ancient ethos still widely practised and much praised by governments which don’t pick up the bill.  We do this too with short-term emergencies, but elder care is continuous.

Indonesian politicians and top bureaucrats can pay for home nursing which adds status to the family, so the incentive to intervene in aged care has yet to arrive.  

That’s not the Ozzie way.  We pay high taxes (Indonesians don’t) and governments have responsibilities which can’t be shunted onto others. Yet that’s what’s happening.

(Disclosure of insights:  My widowed MIL, 82, is losing muscle control; though still mentally alert she needs constant attention.  Two of her six children live under the same ill-maintained roof.  The others cook special meals and wash her linen.  It’s a big op which may run for many years putting brakes on others’ plans, though commonplace in this society.)

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 5 November 2020: https://johnmenadue.com/where-to-send-granny-bringing-the-last-generation-back-into-total-society/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

POMPEO'S TIME WASTER

 He came, he saw, he scampered

Does anyone in Washington know anything about Indonesia? Clearly not, or White House staff would have urged State Secretary Mike Pompeo to enjoy fall in Washington. So there must be another reason for a 32,000 km round trip other than to escape Trump’s tirades.

Jakarta in the wet season is awful.  Apart from overcrowding, humidity, pollution and chaotic traffic the rains swell the still-uncontrolled Ciliwung River flooding scores of streets.  It’s an annual event, and like aged care in Australia, about to be fixed.

Then there’s faith.  Arriving for meetings during an extended public holiday to celebrate Maulid Nabi Muhammad (the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday) in the world’s most populous Muslim nation is downright rude.

The plump US politician isn’t into respect.  He came to hector the natives to trust Uncle Sam rather than the Big Panda even though his audience knows more about Red Threats than the former CIA director has had regrets.

Communism has been banned in Indonesia since the 1965-66 genocide of maybe more than half a million. To suggest someone has Marxist leanings is like alleging paedophilia and just as damaging.

Why did Pompeo persist?

Senior editor Kornelius Purba at The Jakarta Post reckoned  Pompeo was engaged in an impossible mission ‘to persuade, or more precisely, to pressure Indonesia to work closely with the US in cornering and isolating China, which is Indonesia’s most important trading partner’.

Despite being on a religious break the Indonesians stayed hospitable.  President Joko Widodo and FM Retno Marsudi told Pompeo, again, that Indonesia’s position hadn’t changed. 

Smoothing out the same script from her September meeting with the American, Marsudi said: ‘I re-emphasized the need to pursue inclusive cooperation amid this challenging time, and I underlined the need for every country to be part of the solution in the collective contribution toward world peace, stability and prosperity.’

Unlike the Chinese who’ve promised Corona-19 vaccines should any become available, the Americans brought no gifts – apart from warning of the evil from Beijing, much like his predecessors feared the Yellow Peril.

With the story of Pompeo’s visit on page one, The Jakarta Post thought it prudent to run a highlighted panel alongside saying the daily ‘will include four pages of news and commentary published by China Daily... the Post is not responsible for the material and information contained in the four pages.’

In Britain The Daily Telegraph has stopped publishing China Watch after a decade, claiming it’s paid propaganda designed to influence English-language media.

There’s no deep love for the Trump administration in Indonesia, which has already had its trade clobbered through the US deleting the archipelagic nation from the list of developing and least-developed countries.  The Republic that Pompeo is smooching has been cut off from the special differential treatment available in the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures.

Had Pompeo done more research into the region’s history he’d have seen little need to preach hate for the hammer and sickle in Jakarta. ASEAN was formed as an anti-Communist block in 1967, enthusiastically driven by second President Soeharto, then deeply in Washington’s pocket.

According to international relations academic Yohanes Sulaiman from West Java’s Universitas Jenderal Achmad Yani, the Republic’s foreign relations strategy has three elements:  A ‘constructed past’ which helps unite a diverse population, the story of the struggle for independence with the military taking a central role, and the ‘free and active’ foreign policy stressing non-alignment.

‘This combination creates a strategic culture that abhors the idea of military pacts, viewing them as a threat to independence; emphasizes a defensive orientation; and fears interference by foreign countries, making the country wary of any outside power growing too strong or unchecked in the neighbouring region.’

By population and economy, Indonesia is the biggest of ASEAN’s ten members.  Local politicians try to boost its influence, credentials and potentials, but in reality it’s just an elite dining club.  Meetings are in English, a national language only in Singapore. 

There are no military pacts – this is not an Asian NATO. Countries aren’t allowed to participate in each other’s internal affairs, so after each gathering, they compete to issue bland statements and banal photo line-ups.

The ‘ASEAN Way’ of doing business means solving problems through compromise, consensus and consultation, the so-called cultural practices of the region.  Till now little has been made public for fear of causing upset.

That suddenly changed when Bilahari Kausikan, a former permanent secretary of Singapore’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, suggested Cambodia and Laos should be booted from the clique for getting too close to China.

In a Webinar last month he said: ‘True neutrality means knowing your own interests, taking positions based on your own interests and not allowing others to define your interests for you by default.’

A group of unnamed ‘retired and active Cambodian diplomats’ responded in the weird language of ad hominem assaults:  ‘We were expecting a more intellectually rigorous piece but instead we find it a bit sensationalist, inconsistent and at times contradictory.

‘But what we find repulsive is his arrogant and condescending tone, not just about our country, Cambodia, and Lao PDR, but even towards our current ASEAN Leaders, a behaviour unbecoming of a former diplomat.’

Singapore is hardly neutral.  It recently renewed an agreement allowing US American troops to use its bases until 2035. Britain has a presence on some the island’s military sites, exploiting its old Commonwealth links, something the US lacks.

Another ASEAN member Brunei has Brits on its soil, a light infantry battalion and some choppers. It’s a handy training ground for jungle warfare, along with the Butterworth base in Malaysia - also an ASEAN member.   About 50 Australians are on-site, rising to 350 during exercises.

But none of these outposts are what the US wants – big airfields to hold and launch fighters and refuellers – and he’ll not get landing rights in Indonesia.

There are moves to get Timor Leste into the ASEAN mix and occasionally Australia waves a hand. The old Portuguese colony has some chance.  We have none.   We claim to be part of Southeast Asia and seek closeness, but the locals think otherwise. 

Any country with a crowned head from Europe on its currency and the Union Jack on its flag is not independent.  Australians can argue otherwise with hard historic facts, but for Indonesians, pictures tell all. 

First published in Pearls and Irritations, 2 November 2020:
https://johnmenadue.com/duncan-graham-pompeo-came-to-indonesia-he-saw-he-scurried/

 

 

PLAYING THE RED FEAR HAND

 

                              What works –threats or inducements?

The day after US State Secretary Mike Pompeo announced he’ll be visiting India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Indonesia this month to try and keep the Indian Ocean nations on side, his rival for the region’s attention was making its pitch courtesy of an Indonesian think tank. The approaches were remarkably unalike – one a clenched fist, the other an open hand.

 

 

In Jakarta the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia invited two Chinese ASEAN diplomats, Dr Hoang Anh Tuan and Deng Xijun, to a webinar launch of its ASEAN-China Survey Assessing the Present and Envisioning the Future of ASEAN- China Relations.  

A thousand respondents across Southeast Asia were split into two groups – the ’elite’ (academics, government officials, civil society and business), and students.  The form-fillers were ‘cautiously optimistic’ wanting ASEAN ‘centrality’ to be preserved – which appears to mean ‘sovereignty’.  ‘It is important to ensure that all players ... respect the game in town and not try to replace it with a power-based (dis)order.’

Also commemorating the 70th anniversary of Indonesia-China bilateral relations, the FPCI and the Embassy are running a video competition on the theme of Tell Your China Stories.

All warm and fuzzy, and far from Pompeo’s approach.  His five-day trip comes after meeting ministers from Japan, Australia and India in Tokyo where he spoke of building barriers against Chinese territorial ambition in the South China Sea.

The heads down will ‘include discussions on how free nations can work together to thwart threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party’.  (This phrase is a Pompeo favourite.)

Just ahead of Pompeo came Japan's Yoshihide Suga.  The Nippon’s new leaders usually pay their respects first to Washington, but the PM headed for Indonesia.  He wasn’t flexing muscle but offering a 50 billion yen (AUD 670 million) low-interest loan to help handle the Covid-19 crisis.

Reuters recently reported that Indonesia had rejected US requests for landing and re-fuelling rights for its surveillance planes which monitor Chinese military activity in the South China Sea.  Jakarta hasn’t commented presumably to keep the conversation cool and not antagonise its major investor and trading partner worth around AUD 911 billion dollars annually.

Before the launch of its report, FPCI founder and former US Ambassador to the US Dr Dino Patti Djalal wrote that ‘in Southeast Asia, the Trump administration’s anti-China advocacy is not likely to find a receptive audience.

‘...no Southeast Asian government has responded to – let alone applauded – the Trump administration’s call to oppose or isolate China.’

Djalal suggested several reasons for the indifference – starting with the need to first win the Covid-19 war. Here China has been smart. If a vaccine becomes available it has promised Indonesia 40 million doses showing itself as a ‘solution provider’.

The deal involves state-owned companies and governments in both countries.  So far there’s been no similar pact with the US.

Towards the end of the 75-minute FPCI love-in webinar, participants started tickling the edges of the real issue - Beijing’s ‘nine-dash line’ claim to the South China Sea.  This overlaps the economic zones of five of ASEAN’s ten members – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Brunei. 

They also raised ASEAN’s call for more negotiations for a Code of Conduct for the region – an idea that’s been off and on for years.  Talks may resume next month, though a cynic in another forum said the two sides would not be negotiating but discussing how to resume the negotiations.

In 2018, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the COC would be finalized within three years. That’s a target unlikely to be met, according to Viet Hoang, a lecturer at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Law.  He’s also a visiting scholar at the University of Taiwan, so his remarks will most likely be flicked aside by the Chinese.  Writing in The Diplomat he said:

‘Fundamentally, the situation is simple: ASEAN countries want to curb China’s behaviour, but China does not want its actions to be constrained. ASEAN has little or nothing that it can do to force China to agree on an effective and substantial COC, so the negotiations have continued to deadlock on key issues.

‘China has always wanted to exclude the US and other countries from the COC negotiation process. For example, China wants all signatories to be able to veto naval exercises with any non-signatory, but this is unacceptable to ASEAN countries that rely on relations with external powers to counterbalance China’s growing power. With so many fundamental issues in play, the COC process is not likely to end any time in the near future.’

It’s worth remembering that for the ASEAN countries China is not some distant power far away, but a close neighbour with ancient historical ties that few in the current US administration would appreciate.  The total population of the ASEAN states is 647 million, about half China’s.

Said Djalal: ‘Southeast Asians understand that with economic engagement comes some measure of political influence, but they also experienced the same thing with the US, and they (or some of them) know how to handle it.

‘To expect Southeast Asian governments to commit to a blanket opposition to China under these circumstances is totally unrealistic.

The US ... should project itself as a benign, unselfish superpower supportive of the development needs of the countries in the region. It should be less patronizing, and less judgmental ... project confidence rather than insecurity.

‘It should ease up on this presently obsessive ideological crusade. It should focus more on soft power than hard power...Today, Southeast Asians want to get along with the US and China, but they also want the US and China to get along, at least in their region. Is that too much to ask?’

( First published in Pearls and Irritations, 27 October 2020: https://johnmenadue.com/mike-pompeo-in-indonesia-with-a-clenched-fist/ 

and on 29 October:  https://johnmenadue.com/threats-or-inducements-in-dealing-with-china/

INVESTORS BEWARE

                                                                         The croc in the therapy pool

Indonesian President Joko Widodo wants to snare foreign investors. They’re a wary lot.  Though excited by big markets and the chance of bigger returns, they’re fearful of losing fortunes, and with good reason: Risk.

Indonesia's ranking in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index has stuck in the low 70s – far from Widodo’s aim at position 40. (Singapore =2, Malaysia and Australia = 14.)

So his government has rammed through more than 1,000 pages of reforms called the Job Creation Law, better known as the Omnibus law.  The goals (set before the pandemic hit) are for an annual per-capita income of AUD 32,000 (currently AUD 4,000) and GDP of AUD 10 trillion in the next quarter-century.

The idea is to clean up the thousands of often contradictory Jakarta and provincial regulations impeding development and ensure controls are centralised, as they were before the democratic reforms of this century.  Almost 80 laws will be amended and thousands of regulations erased.

That sounds meritorious but the Omnibus is finding it hard to get ignition with four different drafts, varying from 812 pages through to 1,035.

Among the clauses shredding red tape are some problematics.  Green tape protections of the environment are also being cut; proponents claim the laws remain strong, but are just being simplified and condensed.

Cynics say it doesn’t matter because any new rules will be snubbed by developers paying off corrupt officials just as past legislation was ignored. 

The illegal felling of protected forests for palm-oil plantations in Kalimantan has been underway for years, the smoke from burning trash sometimes blanketing Singapore. In Sumatra endangered species like the orang-utan are losing their habitat to the fellers and their freedom to wildlife traders.

But the sometimes violent protests against the new laws (600 arrests in the first three days), mainly featuring uni students and labour unions, aren’t focussing so much on saving species but protecting jobs. As in Australia, the shift is to the gig economy, welcomed by the big end of town because it gives more room to hire and fire.

It also fractures the unions’ abilities to represent workers who are spread across different jobs in separate locales.

A regular whinge by investors is that the old laws made downsizing costly as workers had to get 32 months salary if dismissed.  That’s now down to 19 months.

The minimum wage has vanished, though local governments can bring it back provided it’s based on economic growth

Wage rates will be set according to business productivity, not the employees’ education, skills and years of service. Holidays are being cut from two days a week to one.  Long-service paid leave is also being farewelled.

These changes are being cheered by employers’ groups such as the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.  The government predicts three million jobs for school-leavers and graduates, plus six million for those who have lost work through the pandemic. No sources for these calculations have not been revealed, but a cuff seems likely.

Missing from the chorus line is the International Trade Union Confederation:

 ‘It’s staggering that while Indonesia is, like other countries, facing the devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic the government would seek to further destabilise people’s lives and ruin their livelihoods so that foreign companies can extract wealth from the country.’

Once the protests subside there’s unlikely to be a rush of capital into Indonesia because the reforms ignore the croc in the therapy pool – the rule of law.

In an interview with the WA think tank Future Directions International, Jakarta-based lawyer and business consultant Bill Sullivan said:

“... many companies – including Australian companies – if they are properly advised, would be reluctant to make large capital investments in Indonesia

‘... the legal and court systems ... are almost as opaque and non-transparent today as they were during the presidency of Indonesia’s first president, Soekarno.

‘It is an extraordinary weakness in the development of Indonesia and it’s something that even many Indonesian businesspeople rail about and find very discomforting.’

Indonesia Investments managing director Richard van der Schaar likes the new law but cautions business to wait and see.  In a newsletter to members he wrote:

‘ ... over the past decade or so we have seen the Indonesian government coming up with various ambitious and 'game-changing' programs or plans. However, while they look good on paper, actual implementation in the field has always been the main problem.’

‘Indonesia also has to develop a good track record in terms of policy-making, policy-implementation, policy-monitoring, dispute resolving, and legal and regulatory certainty. Building this good track-record can certainly not be done overnight. On the contrary, it requires years of consistent and quality management.’

In the meantime, the protests continue, though now with pro-Omnibus law supporters collecting lunch boxes and water bottles for their time spent waving professionally printed placards. 

Who’s organising?  The standard reply in Indonesia is the never-defined ‘dark forces’.  A synonym is ‘the oligarchy’ of which Widodo, once champion of the wee folk, is now a full member,

 

 

 

First published in Pearls and Irritations 23 October 2020: https://johnmenadue.com/protests-against-indonesian-economic-reform-stability-and-a-minimum-wage-have-gone/