MALANG PREPARES

 

Season’s Fearings

Will it be safe for Christians this Saturday night in Indonesia?  The signs of the festive season used to be plastic mistletoe and corflute Santas in shopping malls.  Now in East Java’s second biggest city it’s armoured cars outside churches.

The angular steel of the ugly green Bushmaster lookalikes clashes with the soft white curves of Our Mary of Mt Carmel towering behind. The Catholic Cathedral has ample space to park war machines because it’s on the crossroads of Ijen Boulevard, the most spacious and richest end of Malang.

The idea is that displays of weaponry deter terrorists – provided they go for big targets.

Yet plenty of lesser-guarded places of worship remain in the metropolis (pop 850,000) which boasts it’s green, smart and accepting – a quality hard to measure, though with a streetscape to impress.

Within 100 metres of the major Protestant church is the Great Mosque of Malang and on the other side of the town square the Catholic Sacred Heart of Jesus.

All the churches are neo-gothic, built more than a century ago and dominating their locales.  During the Second World War, the Japanese occupiers used them to store food and armaments, but they escaped serious damage. 

In July 1947 returning Dutch troops drove into the hilltown to quell militant revolutionaries  who ran a scorched-earth retreat, fire-bombing colonial-era buildings including the Town Hall.  The churches weren’t touched.

Malang fancies itself as different.  When the local authority tried to promote tourism this year by advertising halal (allowed for Muslims) food outlets, huge banners appeared – including on the Town Hall wall - with the slogan in English Malang Tolerant City Not Halal City.

No authorisation but the professional and costly signs carried images of the national flag and were probably made by Jaringan Islam Liberal (JIL). The Liberal Islamic Network champions inter-faith events and has a history of pouncing on hints of division.

Seven years ago hundreds of posters appeared overnight on pillars and trees with the message which translated as:  ‘Good Muslims do not greet Christians with Happy Christmas or celebrate the New Year.’ 

Within two hours they’d all gone, ripped down by JIL members alerted on social media.

 

Other cities haven’t been so willing to bash bigotry with such speed and vigour, though they’ve been targets of hate since the Republic pronounced itself a democracy early this century.

Eight churches in other centres were bombed with coordinated assaults on Christmas Eve 2000.  In May 2018 a family wearing explosive vests targeted three churches in the East Java capital of Surabaya. 

They were reportedly aligned with the Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (Helpers of the State Congregation) a terrorist cell linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Concerned Malang residents of all faiths occasionally gather to support the Deklarasi Malang Berdoa (the Declaration of Prayer for Malang) hoping their initiative will spread. Some killers haven’t been deterred. On Palm Sunday last year suicide bombers hit a church in Makassar.

The Malang church guardians this Christmas should know who among the multitude might have evil intentions. 

Intelligence reports aren’t always reliable.  Recent outrages have surprised security agencies arguing ‘lone wolf’ attacks are unpredictable.  The term is a misnomer – wolves are pack animals and terrorists have links that can be giveaways.

Fortunately fanatics are few and aren’t the brightest glow-worms in the gloom of religious bigotry. Otherwise, they’d notice the church protectors spend more time dozing in the cloisters than eyeballing crowds.

If the bombers could muster enough courage to confront superstitions they’d walk with confidence into the places of worship by looking like the people they want to murder and maim.  But dressing like a kaffir (unbeliever) is ironically hateful to those who specialise in hate.

In a culture where sorcery stays strong, the credulous fear close contact with other religions means they’ll get infected and inadvertently commit the sin of apostasy.

On Java where 88 per cent follow Islam, the differences are easy to spot.  Christian women wear knee-length skirts, the men in suits and ties. They clutch Bibles, walk as couples or families and go bareheaded.

Moslems worship most days often in their everyday gear.  On holy Fridays the men wear sarongs and walk to mosques in all-male groups carrying prayer mats.

The more inflexible like the released Bali bomber Umar Patek, show bruised foreheads as marks of piety. The women cover everything in black bar eyes, though this garb is rare.

Wahhabism, an austere version of Islam imported from Saudi Arabia, has reportedly been encouraging dress codes and funding the widespread building of new mosques. 

Not all are happy with what Goenawan Mohamad,  the founder/ editor of Tempo news magazine labels the ‘Arabisation of Indonesia’, undermining his nation’s traditional coexistence with other creeds.

 Islam Nusantara is a home-grown moderate alternative to the rigid Middle East interpretation of Islam.

Although it’s reported that Indonesians are becoming more religiously conservative, the claim’s difficult to quantify.  Polls are useless because the sample sizes are usually minuscule and taken in Jakarta. 

About 75 per cent of Muslim women in Indonesia wear the headscarf according to Human Rights Watch which blames intimidation by schools and zealots; it was only five per cent in the late 1990s. Whether this is more about fashion than godliness is a contentious debate.

Like Christianity, Islam is split into factions.  The largest, boasting a membership of at least 40 million, is Nahdlatul Ulama  (Revival of the Scholars).

NU seems to have a grip on Malang; in the past, its members have been bloody and brutal, but now it’s pushing moderation and inclusiveness, though still anti-Gay.

This week some of its unarmed cadres will patrol streets protecting the smaller churches.  We’ll soon know whether such a piecemeal approach will ensure Christmas doesn’t go with a bang.  Moderates of all callings will pray so.

(The writer lives in Malang.)

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 21 December 2022:https://johnmenadue.com/seasons-fearings/

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REVEALING AND RESPECTING CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

 The darling buds of Bali        

 

Bali is so unlike the rest of Indonesia it seems unmoored from the archipelago.

 

Before the island was scarred by terrorism and corrupted by commerce it lured foreign adventurers enchanted by the rich spirituality, creating a mystic aura and a pestilence of clichés.  Paradise, abode of peace, island of the gods …

 

Dutch colonial era artist pioneers included Hollander Rudolf Bonnet (1895-1978) and German Walter Spies (1895 - 1942). Later came Australians like Donald Friend (1950-89) who spent the last two decades of his life painting on the island.  

 

The work of these creators has been recognised in biographies and art collections. 

Now comes John Darling, an Australian filmmaker in Bali (Monash University Publishing).

 

This tribute to Bali’s auteur and poet is a 21-essay festschrift edited by Australasian academics, Graeme MacRae and Anton Lucas. An Indonesian translation is expected next year.  It’s enhanced with photos and poems:

 

the eyes

create the paths 

before us

we travel slowly

taking by-ways

pursuing images …

evening visions of red-eyed infinity

return reversed in dawn’s embrace.

 

Darling was born in Melbourne in 1946, the only son of an establishment family. His father, later Sir James Darling and ABC chair, was head of Geelong Grammar School.

 

The lad’s road seemed set as a historian, but after graduating his compass failed.  It was suggested he try Indonesia, a land few Australians knew and fewer understood. Darling wandered across Java to Bali. On a dawn stroll he met I Gusti Nyoman Lempad.

 

One was a respected and prolific Balinese sculptor and artist, then aged 108. The other a 24-year old drifter from faraway, “seeking a place in which to develop my obscure talents.” They couldn’t share language, yet they connected.

 

The lost and disgruntled still head to Bali for something they can’t identify, but the Darling days are gone.  Expectations are no longer coloured by ethnographic research but by fantasy romance in Eat, Pray, Love.

 

So this book is about a place that was, and a time when nomads were curiosities, not ATMs.  Although focusing on one man, it also tells of Bali’s transition from a hippie hideout to a luxury location fit for the G20 suits.

 

In and around the 60s and early 70s Bali drew surfers to the beaches, intellectuals to the hills and both to magic mushrooms. Ubud became a ‘crossroads of culture’.

 

At that intersection stood a searcher with no clear plan or purpose, recalls writer Bruce Carpenter, author of a most insightful chapter.  Both men were “refugees of the international youth movement that had filled our generation with naive dreams of blazing new paths and paradigms.”

 

When Lempad died in 1978 Darling, now fluent in Balinese and close to the family, produced and co-directed with the late British filmmaker Lorne Blair the old man’s spectacular cremation.

 

 Lempad of Bali won the Documentary Award at the Asian Film Festival. It remains a masterpiece and founded Darling’s reputation.  Watch on YouTube.

For the next 17, years he was known as a filmmaker, poet and lecturer. But a hereditary blood disease forced him to Australia for treatment; he died in 2014, aged 68.

 

At the funeral Ubud royal Tjokorda Gde Mahatma Putra Kerthyasa said the only outsiders who could live locally were those who loved the island for what it was – not for what they could get out of it.

 

“John was a man who lived his truth and spoke it.  He didn’t choose an easy life in Bali, he chose a Balinese life. He is remembered … as one of the few foreign custodians of Balinese culture who didn’t take – but shared.”

 

Darling’s films include Bali Hash, Slow Boat from Surabaya, Master of the Shadow and Bali Triptych.

 

Veteran Australian broadcaster Phillip Adams (not in the book, but should have been) described Triptych as “one of the most elegant, scholarly and beautifully made documentary series … when you see Darling's loving, luscious, literate films, you'll understand why.”

Darling’s first wife Diana writes: “His films made his poetry visible.” 

Despite applause and acceptance, Darling said that at times he felt like “a bit of a maverick … isolated and an outsider.’ One friend remembers a ‘somewhat other-worldly fellow.”

The late Made Wijaya writes about a “giant ego” and narcissist “in a nice, not a nasty way”, whatever that means. This chapter adds little.

We all see others differently; individuals are complex and facts morph into myths, but disparate recalls confuse. They should have been clarified or cut.

Similarly, pointless anecdotes and lists of names like a club register.  These tarnish finer offerings, such as a pensive analysis by anthropologist E Douglas Lewis.

Fortunately, editor MacRae’s clear writing steers readers back on the road to ponder his subject’s physical and cerebral journey. 

 

Darling was sick and in Canberra in 2002 when Jemaah Islamiyah fundamentalists bombed a Bali night club killing 202 including 88 Australians and 38 Indonesians.  

 

Despite his illness, within ten days he was back on the island with his wife Sara as co-producer. Crews from mainstream TV channels focused on the terrorists. The couple’s self-funded Healing of Bali lets victims tell their stories alongside reflections of faith leaders.

 

Sara addresses her late husband as “an amazing dreamer and wonderful storyteller … through your films, poetry, art, and love of life.”

 

His accessible interpretations of our northern neighbour’s values make them clearer, hopefully helping those Australians who think differences are threats.  This book should help keep Darling’s legacy alive, help outsiders better appreciate Indonesia and marvel at the work of its creative citizens.

 

 Disclosure:  The author is one of the contributors.

First published in Antara 15 December 2022: https://en.antaranews.com/news/265675/the-darling-buds-of-bali

 

 

 

 

ONE CITY SINKS; ANOTHER FOLLOWS

A tale of two cities     

Jakarta:   Credit The Jakarta Post

              

Jakarta is sinking up to 28 cm every year. This isn’t a lab model of climate change – it’s Ridgey Didge.  Sceptics should visit, see the future and sound alarms.

For Australians in Fremantle, Darwin, Cairns and other coastal towns listed as at risk from rising seas, the response of authorities in Indonesia’s capital has been a DO NOT guide.

With 10.6 million people plus the weight of their homes, offices, factories and roads, Jakarta is facing a double-whammy: It’s often swamped by the rising ocean while sinking into the mud of the Ciliwung Estuary.

Major districts will soon be unliveable.  About 40 per cent of the 700 square kilometre metropolis is below sea level turning streets into waterways every wet season.

 Indonesian President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo is a can-do guy. His solution is to shift the capital 1,300 km to the north, call it Nusantara (the old name for the archipelago) and fill with two million bureaucrats by 2045.

This proposed city is on the underpopulated island of Borneo.  So far it’s little more than one man’s mega-fantasy, a rival to Naypyidaw in Myanmar (2005), Islamabad in Pakistan (1960) and Brasilia in Brazil (1960).

Queensland University planner Dr Dorina Pojani,  has tagged these grandiose schemes as ‘great planning disasters …dreary, overpowering, underserviced, wasteful and unaffordable. In short, they are extremely expensive mistakes.’

Nusantara is currently just a toll road snaking into the jungles of East Kalimantan Province.  However deep its boosters drill, the foundations of US $34 billion to support the concept have yet to be found.

 Widodo’s six predecessors occasionally glanced at a new city model, but he’s the first to put keys in the ignition, wanting to drive through a Candi Bentar (traditional split gateway) by late 2024.

That’s when his second five-year term as leader of the world’s fourth-largest nation ends. The Constitution says a decade’s enough, so his successor will have the job of keeping the Cats dozing and cranes rising. 

Even though underwriters have been wooed with tax holidays they’re playing hard to find.

In January 2020 Maritime Affairs and Investment Coordinating Minister Luhut Panjaitan trumpeted the Japanese SoftBank Corporation had $40 billion ready.  The company didn’t confirm but sent staff to take a look.

This March it said it was ‘passing on the project’.  To understand the huge impact of that short statement, change the first vowel.

Luhut forgot the rule of no spats when wooing money, blaming SoftBank’s indifference on a share price slump. The response was blunt: ‘Return of interest’.

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

Tough bankers expect budgets to blow on greenfield constructions as unforeseen problems arise, so pad loan agreements. Unfortunately, in Indonesia the expansion will be gross, inflated by corruption.

The Republic ranks 96 out of 180 nations investigated by Transparency International.  That’s an improvement – it was placed 102 the previous year. Failure to take this evil seriously worries ethical foreign funders. Several countries, including Australia, have laws for citizens who bribe overseas to be prosecuted in their homeland.

The best chance of shifting Jakarta came during the economic boom of the 1970s and 80s.  The population was half today’s and awash with dollars shoring up capitalism against the feared Red Wave supposedly rolling south from the Vietnam War.

Avarice intervened. By the time citizens got fed up with President Soeharto’s kleptocracy and indifference to civil rights, the 1998 Asian financial crisis was already embedded.

After 32 years Soeharto quit. He died a decade later.  Ironically the estimated sum of public money he allegedly stole is equal to the budget for Nusantara.

This century Jakarta has grown fatter, uglier and more polluted. Solutions driven more by panic than reason have included banning regional citizens from migrating to the capital – a doomed hope in an open city.

Next came sea walls built in 2002.  Five years later the worst storm in recent history smashed the concrete.  The Java Sea inrush drowned 80, washed away traffic and ruined thousands of homes.  The bill topped US $332 million.

Never again, said the residents, but to no effect. Flooding’s now an annual event with warnings in place till next February, stressing yet again the sense in shifting.

In 2019 Widodo said he’d found the perfect place and set about funding grand PR and advisory committees galore. One includes UAE President Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan and former UK PM Tony Blair.

The chainsaws started growling this July, so your correspondent asked if backers were in place.  Matey media flacks who’d earlier offered swags of facts and ‘artists’ impressions’ of the splendid new palace in the ‘green, smart city’ started slamming doors and ignoring calls.

Other journos were spotting the same red flags.  Academics publishing overseas raised questions about consultation with locals, damage to the environment and the emergence of a ‘land mafia’ buying big and rigging prices.

Seemingly unfazed Widodo continues to say all’s well. On 2 December he told a forum of CEOs in Jakarta that ‘to my surprise, the first market survey (of Nusantara) was already over-subscribed up to 25 times … I want to focus on investment, not depending on the state budget.’

Widodo can be enigmatic and some subtleties may have been lost in translation, 

but if the President has watertight contracts tucked into his sarong he’d be naming names and sums with the same energy he’s using to sell ‘the pride of the nation’.

If Indonesians believe the new city will be a goer they’d be asking about compensation for movers, the cost of relocating and a thousand other questions. 

They don’t, suggesting Nusantara has only one true believer.

Meanwhile, the sea rises, the rain falls and Jakarta sinks. If it’s on your bucket list, fly soon.

First published in Michael West Media 17 December 2022: 

 https://michaelwest.com.au/tale-of-two-cities-jakarta-is-sinking-while-funding-for-new-capital-yet-to-surface/

NO APPLAUSE FOR NEW LAWS

            One law for us, another for them?

Certificates, please.                                    Photo credit BBC

It seems Indonesia’s new bonk-ban laws are discriminatory and racist.  Bad news if you believe legal systems should be impartial, but good tidings for ‘bule’ (white skin foreigners).  So sayeth a governor.

The national parliament in Jakarta this month unanimously passed a law with 624 articles across 37 chapters, an overdue clean-up of the century-old criminal code left over from the Dutch colonial era.

The section banning sex outside marriage has aroused concern and ridicule; implementation will be impossible; easier to prohibit gravity.

But the new laws go beyond the bedroom into newsrooms and places where people talk, write, blog, vlog and tell the world their thoughts and pains. That’s all part of being a democracy.  Indonesia claims to be a member.

But should a free-speech exerciser defame (whatever that means), the President, his ministers, the five-point national ideology of Pancasila and just about anyone claiming VIP status, then the clink beckons.  There’s no defence of truth.

 Likewise with blasphemy, encouraging apostasy, treason and publishing fake news or anything which creates disturbance or community unrest. Which is what the new laws have done already.

Article 424 covers the sale and supply of alcohol. Indonesian celebrity lawyer Hotman Paris commented: ‘The article doesn't make sense, there’s no legal reason and it must be removed from the face of this earth.’

A woman who’s had an abortion faces up to four years in jail. A section on ‘indecent acts’ could target non-heterosexuals.  However, there’s a positive – death sentences can be turned to life imprisonment if the offender behaves well for a decade and shows remorse.  Take note, USA.

At first, it was said the new laws applied to everyone in the Muslim-majority country. Then Governor Wayan Koster assured foreigners in Bali they’re exempt.

This is a curious pledge akin to the Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles telling visiting US troops on rotation from Oregon (which has de-criminalised much drug taking) that they can ignore Australian laws.

Former mathematician Koster is a member of the Republic’s most powerful political party.  As Governor of Bali, one of Indonesia’s 38 provinces, his words should carry clout.

But he isn’t a national legislator (though he was for 14 years), legal academic, public prosecutor or top cop, positions which might strengthen his assurance.

So when he says ‘there’ll be no checking on marital status … at any tourism accommodation,’ can foreign unmarrieds who share the same bed rest easy?  Maybe not.

Koster suggests the police will only sniff for locals, but no one will know till the laws are exercised three years hence.

Much of the international media has focused on the sexy bits, but Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono takes a drone view of the political landscape:

‘The laws are a setback for already declining religious freedom in Indonesia and could be misused to target certain individuals.

“The danger of oppressive laws is not that they’ll be broadly applied, it’s that they provide avenues for selective enforcement, endangering sexual, religious and ethnic minorities… providing an avenue for extortion.’

At a media conference the US ambassador to Indonesia, Sung Kim shifted the debate to the boardroom, foreseeing a ‘negative impact on the investment climate.’

Speaking bluntly is risky in a nation sensitive to outsiders’ opinions, as the UN resident coordinator in Jakarta, Valerie Julliand, discovered.

Her office stated several laws ‘contravene Indonesia's international legal obligations with respect to human rights.

"Some articles have the potential to criminalise journalistic work… Others would discriminate against, or have a discriminatory impact on, women, girls, boys and sexual minorities.

‘The code could also affect reproductive and privacy rights and exacerbate gender-based violence based on sexual orientation and identity.’

Ironically, Indonesia has been a member of the UN Human Rights Council for the past two years.  Its role ends this month.

Indonesian academic Moch Faisal Karim claimed his country’s human rights advocacy at the UN ‘is often inconsistent and half-hearted.’  He wrote this before the new law so may escape censure.

The Foreign Ministry summoned Julliand for a dressing down, saying the UN should ‘have consulted with the government before airing its misgivings.’

Sung Kim didn’t get called to explain, but he’s been told to butt out by the country’s peak Islamic body the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (Islamic Scholars’ Council).

 Deputy Chair Anwar Abbas said the Ambassador’s statement ‘had the quality of taking sides and a threatening tone. The US appears to have an ambition of forcing or pressuring Indonesia to provide space for LGBT practices and sex outside of marriage.

‘If the US insists on pushing through this position and view, then the MUI explicitly declares: Go to hell with US aid and investment which damages the nation's religion and culture.’

Then the cruncher dismaying those hoping that advancing humanity’s universal needs could overtake insularity: ‘We want to live with our own identity, not with the identity of other people or nations.’

Indonesia is constitutionally secular, but 88 per cent of the population follows Islam.  The new laws appear to be appeasing ultra-conservatives hostile to ‘liberal Western values’, than ensuring justice and protecting the rights of all.

Melbourne University law Professor Tim Lindsey writes that many provisions are ‘dangerously vague and wide in their scope … empower(ing) the state at the expense of citizens.

‘This deeply flawed new criminal code is likely to meet with stiff opposition from lawyers and activists, including protests, even though the new code bans ‘unannounced demonstrations.’ It’s inevitable it will end up in the Constitutional Court’.

In the meantime best wear a wedding band in Bali, only talk about the weather and keep the Governor’s number on speed dial.

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 First published in Pearls & Irritations, 16 December 2022:https://johnmenadue.com/one-law-for-us-another-for-them/

NOT WED? THEN NO DOUBLE BED IN BALI

Lock your bedroom:  The state is perving

TRAVEL WARNING:  Don't do this in Bali without a certificate

The G 20 in Bali last month was a splendid success – and not just because world leaders talked to each other proving differences can sometimes be understood, if not always accepted.

The grand two-day event also showcased Indonesia as a modern, progressive, tolerant and efficient state deserving respect and applause.  No longer. Cheers have turned to jeers.

Now the international news isn’t about grand-scale diplomatic breakthroughs that could make the world a safer place. That worthy account has been kicked to touch by lawmakers climbing into bedrooms.

There’s hardly a newspaper, radio or TV station around the world which hasn’t run the story of the Indonesian Legislative Assembly unanimously revising the Criminal Code to include a clause making consensual extramarital sex illegal.

Inevitably it’s been tagged ‘Bali bonk ban’ – and the mockery is widespread and justified.   Apart from being a gross affront to citizens’ privacy and an assault on human rights, it’s also a nutty notion.

In practical terms, how can it ever be widely enforced?  There aren’t enough jails in the country to hold the tsunami of offenders that would swamp the legal system.

Using Indonesia’s population surge as proof (2.3 live births per woman compared to Australia’s 1.6) it’s clear Indonesians like sex as much as any other humans and will enjoy the natural practice whatever their marital status. 

The pious sly will honour the law by using a Mut’ah temporary contract, ‘marrying’ before a compliant cleric just ahead of undressing, and ‘divorcing’ after the post-coital shower.

The salacious reports divert from the more serious questions:  How did this come about, who’s running this show and what’s the intent?

The legislation would not have surprised readers of this website as the decision was flagged here a month before the legacy media noticed.

But the story starts more than six years ago when the Aliansi Cinta Keluarga (Family Love Alliance) started to get its agenda heard.

 Till then radical Muslims had backed the Front Pembela Islam (FPI - Islamic Defenders’ Front).  It used firebrand speakers and mass rallies to force demands for an end to pluralism, liberalism and other perceived Western pollutants.

Their biggest success came in late 2016 when it overfilled Jakarta’s one-square-kilometre Merdeka (Freedom) park and engineered blasphemy charges against the city governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok).  The ethnic Chinese Christian was jailed for two years.

The government took fright at the growing power of the FPI so jailed its leader Rizieq Shihab, and got tough on his followers.  On one occasion police shot six dead on a Jakarta highway - driving the radicals underground.

Since then the Family Love Alliance has filled the vacuum by claiming it wants to strengthen ‘family values.’

The Alliance appears mild and mainstream, the image a gathering of grans. The giveaway is the acronym it uses – AILA - Arabic for ‘big family.’  As one commentator noted:

‘Unlike the FPI, which often acts outside or above the law, AILA is exploiting the existing legal system to turn law enforcers into a morality police, so that later they will practically do what the FPI has been doing for years.’

Which is what’s happened.

Before readers cancel their Kuta getaways, note the law has to be ratified and signed off by President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo. Judicial appeals are likely.

The big end of town is worried. The US Ambassador in Jakarta Sung Kim has reportedly forecast ‘a negative impact on the investment climate.’ Tourism businesses horrified by the overseas headlines will be lobbying to get unwed foreigners excluded from the no-cohabitation rule.

Three years ago when drafts of the proposed law were revealed, five died and 232 were injured when thousands protested in the streets of major cities. They demanded the state get out of people’s private lives and concentrate on improving education and health care, reducing poverty and concentrating on corruption.

The government has been trying to placate. Deputy Minister of Law and Human Rights Edward Hiariej has been quoted as saying nothing will change for at least a year as new regulations are assembled.

These are expected to include a clause restricting dob-ins of adulterers to relatives of the naughty couple, supposedly to keep neighbours from twitching curtains – another impossible goal.

It also won’t stop vigilantes believing they’ve been given a social licence to operate as morality police – a practice refined by FPI hoons who terrorized drinkers and gamblers during the holy month of Ramadan.

Human Rights Watch's researcher, Andreas Harsono told the BBC that in Middle East states with similar laws, women were punished and targeted more than men:

 

‘The danger of oppressive laws is not that they'll be broadly applied, it's that they provide avenues for selective enforcement.’

 

There are other revisions that are concerning in a country which wags call a ‘pious democracy’ as all citizens must belong to an approved religion.

In a move towards Thailand’s lese majesty laws, Indonesia’s legislators also want insulting the president and ministers to be a jailable offence.  It’s unclear whether normally humble Widodo supports this oppression of speech.

 Most likely it’s been inserted by politicians jealous of their status as the definition is a catch-all: ‘An act that humiliates or damages the honour, or the image of the government or state institutions, including insulting or slandering’.

Although the adultery clause is getting the most attention this is just one of 600 changes to the Criminal Code, with many replacing a mish-mash of old Dutch law, customary law and laws passed since the country was declared a republic in 1945.

At the time there was a strong push to make the new nation a theocracy and compel Muslims to follow Shariah law. 

That failed, but the zealots haven’t given up.  These new laws don’t go that far, but they do weaken the secular state, easing the way for harsher changes in the future.

 First published in Pearls & Irritations, 9 December 2022: https://johnmenadue.com/indonesia-bans-sex-outside-marriage-amid-sweeping-law-changes/

ALL THE WAY WITH THE USA

    Forgive thine enemies, let losers loose

LOSERS WHO WIN: Prabowo Subianto (l) and Sandiaga Uno (Kompas)

Americans will get to the ballot box in late 2024.  Such is our infatuation with US politics that by Guy Fawkes’ night we’ll have absorbed enough minutia to know more about their electoral system than ours.

Earlier the same year there’ll be another election of great importance to our future – yet so far the media has shown little interest in telling what’s going on in the nation next door. 

On Valentine’s Day 2024 citizens of the world’s third-largest democracy will decide who’ll run their nation for the next five years. Their choice could maintain the current harmony of indifference between us and them, or revive mistrust.

The man to worry about is Prabowo Subianto, adored by hankerers for the good ol’ days when leaders ruled and the masses obeyed.  Like his late father-in-law President Soeharto, the disgraced former general knows how to create myths and crush dissent.

This Alpha male could try again in the 2024 Presidential election. If he wins we’ll have an unstable authoritarian on our doorstep.

Subianto is the archipelago’s Donald Trump, a hot-tempered autocrat minus bone spurs so he has a military record.  He’s a successful businessman but better educated than the US version.

Despite having a mighty war chest and on-side media, in 2019 he lost to lowly lad Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo. 

Subianto had fought furiously for the top job. His team had viciously slandered Widodo through fictions about family history, ethnicity and religion.  Just like Trump claimed Barack Obama was not a native-born American.

Despite the slurs, Widodo took 55.5 per cent of the vote. The voluntary participation rate was 83 per cent of the almost 191 million registered voters.

Some claimed the result had been rigged, so rioted in Jakarta.  Six were killed, 200 injured, vehicles were firebombed and buildings trashed.  Agent provocateurs were blamed but none charged.

After being humiliated Subianto should have crept back to his ranch and locked the gate.

Instead, he’s travelling the world shopping for guns and bombs as Indonesia’s Defence Minister while his defeated sidekick Sandiaga Uno is Minister for Tourism.

Discovering how these losers got their jobs and kept face will test readers’ incredulity levels but might improve understanding of Indonesian politics, best done with a hypothetical.

Back in May new PM Anthony Albanese was pondering picks for Cabinet.  Home Affairs is tricky so best go for experience.  Obviously Scott Morrison.

Primary Industries demands a ruddy rural face.  So Albo rang Barnaby Joyce. Unbelievable in Oz, but reality next door.

Widodo’s benevolence and forgiveness weren’t just quests for harmony, a value well embedded in Javanese culture.  They were politically smart.

As Lyndon Johnson crudely said: ‘Better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.’

The downside is that as Defence Minister Subianto, 71, gets to spruik policies and keep his name before the public and face on TV.

Like Kim Jong-un, he’s shown surrounded by men with more medals on their chests than hair, which he seems to enjoy.

Like Putin he rides horses but keeps his shirt on; the septuagenarian flab would mar the image which some equate to Mussolini reviewing paramilitary parades atop a stallion.

Subianto has such a damaged past that in other jurisdictions he’d be forever damned.

When Soeharto fell in 1998 after 32 years running the world’s fourth most populous country Subianto, head of the ‘most highly trained killers – the Kopassus red berets’– saw a sudden opportunity.  He tried to get the departing president to make him army chief.

The bid failed and Subianto was dishonourably discharged for ‘misinterpreting orders’. He was banned from the US for human rights abuses relating to the disappearance of student activists. He then fled to exile in Jordan.

But he still had swags of ambition, a rich younger brother and mates in the oligarchy to aid his return and get into politics.

Unable to find an empty launch pad he started the Partai Gerakan Indonesia Raya - the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra). It’s dubbed nationalistic and populist.

If it has any policies other than to elect the leader, then they’re well hidden. Rural Indonesians have been promised care and recognition, but his party gets most ‘likes’ by slandering LGBTQs and warning that foreigners plan to destroy the country.  This last claim came from a sci-fi novel.

 

In the 575-seat lower house Gerindra holds 78 against the Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan (Democratic Party of Struggle) with 128.

The PDIP is Widodo’s party though the power is with its matriarch Megawati Soekarnoputri.  She’s the daughter of Soekarno, the founder of modern Indonesia and its first president. Widodo reckons his relationship is like ‘mother and child.’

The lady was the nation’s fifth president (2001- 04),  a rest awhile period.  As VP she inherited the job when Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur) was impeached, but rejected by the public when she sought election in her own right.

To stop Subianto from taking another stab at the presidency, lobbyists have been pushing for a change in the Constitution so Widodo, 61, can hang in there for a few more years. 

Megawati has reportedly ruled this out.  She wants her daughter Puan Maharani in the Palace, but polls show voters say No Way,

The incumbent hasn’t completely abandoned the idea of staying on – clarity is not his style. However, it seems he’s shaken his head rather than nodded by obliquely promoting a candidate ‘who thinks only of the people’s interests that his hair grows white.’

Riddling is another Javanese trait, allowing the listener to interpret while keeping the speaker free to deny should plans go awry.

The assumption is that Widodo wants Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, 54, as his successor.  His thatch fits, but so do many others.

Pranowo doesn’t come from the elite, the military or big business.  His father was a cop and the family were hillside villagers in Central Java, while Widodo was raised in a riverbank shack.

Both went to Jogjakarta’s Gadjah Mada University, Widodo for forestry and Pranowo law.  The two show little interest in matters beyond domestic issues.

When he met Australian Ambassador Penny Williams in September Pranowo’s comments were bland: ‘Hopefully, the emotional atmosphere will become closer.’

That won’t happen without major efforts on both sides. Otherwise, Australians will be full bottle about people and events 16,000 km distant, while knowing nothing of the neighbours, what they’re up to, and why.

ABC TV has Planet America, China Tonight and India Now.  Time for Inside Indonesia.

 ·        Style note: The Indonesian media uses first names for newsmakers. To Westerners this feels smarmy, hence second names.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 6 December 2022:  https://johnmenadue.com/forgive-thine-enemies-let-losers-loose/