TIS THE SEASON FOR NOISE

            Wake in fright but fear not; Ramadan’s here

Credit: Anadolu Agency

 

It’s 1444 on the Islamic calendar and the holy month of Ramadan is well advanced with four weeks of fasting, prayer, introspection and goodwill. All commendable - though in the land next door the noise spoils the values.

 

Unlike WA which has jarrah street poles or SA with Stobies, Indonesia uses hollow metal pipes to carry power and phone lines. These double as alarms.

 

Bash jarrah and it responds with a low timbre, not out of place in nature. But a steel stanchion whacked with an iron bar at 3 am is industrial din - the security guard’s reminder to rise, bathe and feast before the sun crests the mountains.

 

No problem when all agree to be woken to their responsibilities. But in our soundscape live folk of other faiths and ‘KTP (ID card) Muslims’. The Aussie equivalent of ‘wedding and wake Christians’ and too cowardly to protest - like your correspondent.

 

In 2015 Jusuf Kalla announced a team to check sound levels from the 800,000 mosques across the world’s most populous Islamic nation. As vice president, he could get away with suggesting a loud-speaker war was being waged and faith-powered boom no boon to developing a modern nation.

 

But then Sumatra householder  Meiliana, 44, muttered to a neighbour about  the local mosque’s five-times-daily calls to prayer. Her whispered whinge was amplified and distorted through social media. Riots erupted and 14 Buddhist temples were ransacked in Tanjung Balai.

 

The ethnic Chinese was charged with blasphemy for allegedly saying: ‘Lower the volume of the mosque. It’s too loud and hurts my ears.’ That landed her in jail for a year with six months on parole.

 

The story echoed around the Western world damaging Indonesia’s image of tolerance. VP Kalla’s initiative was never heard again.

 

Indonesia is constitutionally secular but allows followers of six religions to practice openly - Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism (aka ‘Christians’) Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. 

 

In central East Java, where this column is being keyboarded, the Catholic church bell in the heart of Malang city tolls for thee at 6 am - but no worries. By then all are awake and the kids heading to school for a 7 am start.

 

Although less than three per cent of the population follows the Church of Rome, it runs hospitals, universities and schools that accept students of all faiths. So they hold a credit balance in the community should strife flare, an insurance not always enjoyed by the other God-botherers who tend to insularity.

 

A few fast food outlets stay open during the day for non-Muslims and those deemed exempt. These include the unwell of both sexes, women breastfeeding, menstruating or pregnant; their numbers are surprising. The windows are curtained so the righteous aren’t tempted, and passers-by can’t see who’s cheating.

 

Once the sun has tumbled out of sight - which it does rapidly in the tropics - sirens sound like an air-raid warning all-clear. 

 

Then the bukber (collective break fasts) get going. This is a chance for families to flaunt their wealth, angering  President Joko ‘Jokowi' Widodo.

 

He’s issued a prohibition against civil servants serving lavish meals and provoking envy; the gap between the richest and the rest has grown faster this century - much under his watch -  than elsewhere in Southeast Asia  according to an Oxfam report:

 

Indonesia is now ‘the sixth country of greatest wealth inequality in the world … the four richest men in Indonesia have more wealth than the combined total of the poorest 100 million ...’  Some calm their consciences by distributing meals, publicising their munificence with company logos.

 

Top hotels fear losing trade and religious authorities say the president’s order breaks tradition.  His office explained the ban also prevents the spread of Covid.  Curious, for there are no curbs on the dense crowds in the takjil fast-end markets.

 

At lower levels, the bukber gatherings of  friends and neighbours with differing expectations of the hereafter assuage hunger, erode distrust and dispel annoyance: ‘Does the 3 am wake-up bother Sir? No probs mate, right as rain.’

 

After the saur predawn meal, the increasingly grumpy adults hit the mattress again, but the wide-awake kids are let loose from the disciplines that govern their other 11 months.

 

Packs of 20 plus  pre-teen and adolescent boys, and now more frequently girls, dash around  the streets spreading their sarongs like bat wings, yahooing loudly and throwing firecrackers.

 

In Australia 000 calls would jam police switchboards, and Sky News would rabbit on about Asian gangs. The Indonesians make a racket, but they don’t hot-wire cars, break into homes, bash or booze.  They’re so self-absorbed the only things they throw at passers-by are glances.

 

My dawn bike rides sometimes draw shouts of bule (whitey), for foreigners here are rarer than Bibles in mosques and Korans in churches, but the banter is benign.  Last week one smart lad yelled ’wiseman’ in English. Then an afterthought: Was he being cynical?

 

The climax is Idul Fitri on 21 April, a fortnight following Easter. In the week before millions take to the streets for mudik. This is the gift-giving mass return to families asking for blessings in the year ahead and seeking forgiveness for bad words and deeds in the twelvemonth past - lahir dan batin. Like a fault-prone laptop, 1445 will get a factory reset.

 

A predicted 123 million individuals on overloaded motorbikes and cars will quit the metropoles in a roar of power bouncing off the concrete canyons and a fog of CO2. It’s a practice-run for Armageddon.

 

There were more than 700 deaths and 1,000 serious injuries in Jakarta during the last exodus. As many prangs go unreported the number will be higher.  

 

For health and safety reasons the religious authorities could classify mudik as haram (forbidden), and the government pass noise-abatement laws.

 

These sensible suggestions your reporter declines to offer. To maintain Australian-Indonesian harmony it’s best we stomach the holy month’s quirks and cacophony - plus the meals and hospitality.

 

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WHAT CHANCE A STABLE INDONESIAN GOVERNMENT?

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Doomed   

Jokowi among mates in Malang,  But the scene will be different in Jakarta.

                                 

On 9 July an estimated 187 million Indonesians will have the chance to directly elect their next president.  Current front runner is former Jakarta governor Joko Widodo (Jokowi), pursued by military man Prabowo Subianto. Jokowi has Jusuf Kalla, a former vice president (2004-2009) as running mate in a pairing billed as youth and experience. But as Duncan Graham in East Java argues, this could be a dysfunctional partnership.

…………………….

Drum roll and trumpet blast.  “Ladies and gentlemen, please be upstanding for the next President of the Republic of Indonesia, Haji Doktor Muhammad Jusuf Kalla, exemplary businessman, outstanding political leader and internationally renowned peace-maker, the man who will take this great nation forward to its natural destiny.

“Some of you may have heard he’s the Vice Presidential candidate; technically that’s right. But we all know who’ll be the Big Man around here.” (Applause and laughter.)

Indonesians defer to seniors. Kalla is 72, an age where ambitions have flatlined and a man no longer cares what others think.  Should he still be standing when his term ends in 2019 (life expectancy for Indonesian men is 68) he’ll be more concerned at juggling his great grand children than jostling for sinecures in academia or the UN.

After a career just a heartbeat from the top, the moment has come to stop being an also-ran. For the past five years he’s sat as chairman of the Red Cross in its Jakarta office.

From there he’s watched his former boss Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), the man who dumped him in the 2009 election campaign because he was too threatening, let the people’s mandate slip from his grasp and become President Bland.

This is Kalla’s final chance to make his mark, to achieve greatness, to be remembered as a Sulawesi hero who trounced the Javanese. He’s got nothing to lose.

Who’s going to roadblock?  Jokowi, a furniture businessman from a provincial town, briefly the Governor of Jakarta? He’s a candidate with no qualifications for national leadership other than being what the others are not – an unpretentious man of the people who seems to want a better Indonesia, not personal power and limitless wealth.

Wearing a plain shirt, walking to work and eating bakso (meatball soup) on the sidewalk is great media but it’s not statesman stuff. Indonesians expect leaders to strut.

If Jokowi has a philosophy it’s that we should all be nice to one another.  Another mild guy preached that 2,000 years ago and look what happened to him. 

In the chilling documentary The Act of Killing about the 1965 massacre of communists, Kalla promotes violence at a rally of paramilitary thugs called Pancasila Youth: (Pancasila – five principles – is the State ideology).

“The spirit of Pancasila Youth, that some people accuse of being gangsters. Gangsters are people who work outside of the system, not for the government. The word gangster (‘preman’ in Bahasa Indonesia) comes from ‘free men’. This nation needs ‘free men’.

“If everyone worked for the government we’d be a nation of bureaucrats. We’d get nothing done. We need gangsters to get things done. Free, private men, who get things done. We need gangsters, who are willing to take risks in business. Use your muscles! Muscles aren’t for beating up people. Although beating people up is sometimes needed.”

Yet at another time and place he was deservedly applauded for cutting peace deals after prolonged fighting in Aceh and the Moluccas, resolutions that had escaped SBY and his predecessors. There was talk of a Nobel nomination.

Kalla is equally at ease in the departments, the mandarins are his mates. He knows where the skeletons lie, and the living know he knows.

Jokowi may be the little people’s hope for change, but he’s an outsider in Jakarta’s intertwined incestuous, elite and corrupt political establishment.

He has no organised personal powerbase. He doesn’t have a daughter married to a minister or a son who runs a pesantren (Islamic boarding school). His wife has no brothers who are generals or sisters married to megatycoons.

He’s never  communed with Javanese spirits in a mountain cave or featured in a mystic’s prediction. Neither has he ever ordered a battalion to load live ammunition or shaken world leaders’ hands.

Kalla once drove Golkar, former president Soeharto’s political vehicle now rebadged as a democratic people mover. He’s old enough to be 52-year old Jokowi’s Dad and even claims to have persuaded the former Solo (Central Java) mayor to move to the Big Durian and stand as Governor.

When Kalla was manipulating the nation with Soeharto the lanky forester was in Yogyakarta  studying timber.

Kalla won’t need to remind his protégé about the differences; why state the obvious? He’ll let the youngster make speeches and look important when visitors come.  He’ll show him around the traps if he has time, introduce him to a few mates from the old days, point out the toilets, correct his English – that sort of thing.

Unless Jokowi can assert himself from the moment the Koran is raised above his head as he takes the presidential oath, his term is doomed. He’ll be cipherman, not superman, Indonesia’s Jimmy Carter – nice guy, no mongrel.

Kalla won’t be his only problem.  A popular cartoon doing the smartphone rounds shows a baby Jokowi nursed by mother Megawati Soekarnoputri (daughter of Soekarno) a former inept President and the she-who-must-be-obeyed head of the misnamed Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) that nominated Jokowi.

She’s in the game to keep her founding president Dad’s name alive when this generation, with 67 million first-time voters, has already moved on. Daughter Puan Maharani wanted to be Jokowi’s running mate till someone chanced upon a remnant grain of reality. The party continues to be riven by sinetron (soap opera) plotlines, not magisterial policies to inspire great deeds.

Then there’s Indonesia’s Macbeth bewitched for greatness – even named after a revolutionary martyr hero and son of a famous economist.  At 62 former general Prabowo Subianto, once Soeharto’s son-in-law, still bristles with military authority. Self doubt is not his suit. If he hadn’t been so ruthless and arrogant when in uniform and been discharged from the Army he’d be checking the presidential garage right now to see if its big enough to take both his Mercedes and helicopter.

Jokowi doesn’t need to worry – his bike will fit anywhere.

Prabowo has already mustered a coalition that will control more than 50 per cent of the Parliament, ready to wage political guerrilla war on the former Jakarta governor’s shortcomings, as Tony Abbott did on Julia Gillard.  If Jokowi doesn’t fight back furiously he could get impeached, like fourth president and equally decent man Gus Dur, and retire hurt.

In this bleak scenario the stability of our nearest neighbour, the region’s biggest economy and the world’s most populous Islamic nation could be under serious threat.

(First published in On Line Opinion, 23 May 2014http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=16335    )

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ONLY THE NAIVE PREDICT INDONESIAN POLITICS

Is the Indonesian election result a fait accompli? Duncan Graham

Among the many problems in the complex Indonesian electoral system are its cumbersome procedures. The general election was held on 9 April. There were 38 parties contesting and the big ballot paper confused many.

The results came within a month confirming early counts, but the presidential election will not be held till 8 July.

If no candidate gets more than 50 per cent of the vote there’ll be a run off on 8 September.

Under Indonesian law the people directly elect the president and vice president for a five-year term. In the 2004 election the Democratic Party was a tiny player with less than eight per cent of the vote. But the electorate wanted the DP leader Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (best known as SBY), not his principal rival Megawati Soekarnoputri, by a margin of three to two.

On the surface it looks as though the ballot in July will be decisive, but only the naïve make confident predictions about Indonesian politics. Although the present president is scoring a whopping 70 per cent in popularity polls against Megawati at 15 per cent, a lot can happen in the next six weeks.

Take, for example, the arrest this month of the Corruption Commission boss Antasari Azhar on charges of being involved in the murder of a businessman. Although no one has been convicted, the scandal, which also involves a female golf caddy, has damaged SBY’s clean-up campaign.

Apart from more similar weird happenings the main problem is elector fatigue. If all the pundits are saying SBY will win, why bother to go through the boring and complex process of exercising the democratic process yet again, particularly when it’s not compulsory?

SBY’s Democratic Party doesn’t have the industrial strength machinery to get the voters mobilised when compared to Megawati’s Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) and Golkar.

This is the party created by the late authoritarian president Soeharto and ensured he was elected for 32 years by crushing dissent. Golkar’s candidate for the presidency is Jusuf Kalla, the present vice-president who’s standing against his boss.

Kalla has selected Wiranto, a former general, as his VP candidate. Megawati has also gone to the army for her running mate, picking Prabowo Subianto, another retired general with a questionable human rights record and Soeharto’s former son-in-law.

Curious couplings indeed, but offering a glimpse of the residual influence of the military in Indonesian affairs and the complex undercurrents of ethnicity, religion, history and money that swirl through Indonesian politics.

Westerners dealing with Indonesia have been barracking for SBY, not because he’s been an outstanding leader but because the alternatives look so scary.

During the corrupt rule of General Soeharto that ended in 1998 with the Asian economic crisis, the men with the guns ran the country and just about everything else. The army had seats in Parliament, controlled many businesses, had a major internal security role, oversaw the police and were considered untouchable.

Although the military’s influence is no longer so blatant it’s still a force behind the scenes. Boosters for SBY highlight his academic qualifications (he has a doctorate in agriculture), his urbanity and English skills learned while studying in the US, and his middle ground, ultra-cautious politics. He appears to genuinely believe in democracy and has gravitas on the international stage.

Supporters play down his past as a four-star general before entering politics and his military family. His father, father-in-law and a son are, or were, soldiers.

The 9 April election results closely followed informal exit polls. The Democratic Party ran ahead of all in the crowded pack seeking power, winning 21.04 per cent of the vote.

Second was Megawati’s PDIP with 14.52 per cent, a whisker ahead of Golkar mustering 14.23 per cent.

With these results a coalition will have to run the 560-seat Parliament, known as the DPR. How that’s going to be engineered is the critical question, though this time round SBY can bargain from a position of strength.

Optimists say all this shows Indonesians have embraced democracy and are making it work. Those who don’t use rose-coloured glasses note only 61 per cent of the nation’s 171 million eligible electors bothered to vote and millions were disenfranchised through registration stuff-ups.

Fourth in the April election with 8.16 per cent was the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), which kept its Islamic credentials in the background while campaigning hard against corruption. Liberals suspect the party has other agendas and were concerned SBY might pick his running mate from a party that’s against pluralism and women’s rights, and for Sharia law.

Instead SBY cannily selected economist and Bank Indonesia governor Boediono, who studied at the University of Western Australia and Monash, and later in the US. He was Minister of Finance during Megawati’s 2001 – 2004 presidency.

When introducing Boediono to the miffed PKS the president stressed his partner’s dedication to Islam ahead of his impressive financial skills.

Some PKS members reacted by shifting support to Kalla because SBY’s wife Kristiani, and Boediono’s wife Herawati don’t wear headscarves; the sub-text was that the men are poor Muslims unfit to run the country because they can’t control their wives.

Critics of SBY’s administration during the past five years often overlook the huge problems he faced and give insufficient weight to his skills in keeping the political system intact, the economy on course and the nation relatively safe.

In 2004 SBY campaigned for the nation’s top job with businessman Jusuf Kalla, thereby binding Golkar into the government. Golkar gave SBY the numbers on the floor of Parliament, but the compromises required eroded much of his authority.

Megawati, 62, is a lacklustre candidate famous for being aloof and believing she deserves to have the job again just because her dad was the country’s first president. She is widely regarded as being a tool of the military.

Kalla, 67, has been an effective vice-president in the past five years and was instrumental in settling the long-running civil war in Aceh. As a prominent businessman he gave the administration credibility with the big corporations. However he’s not a Javanese, and that’s a major handicap to winning the presidency. He’s also not trusted by the non-Muslims.

SBY, 60, has been unable to stop the imposition of some aspects of Islamic Sharia law in the provinces. These include forcing female bureaucrats and students to wear headscarves, banning alcohol, enforcing prayers and setting up community patrols to sniff out sexual naughtiness, though the Constitution appears to prohibit such local initiatives.

By contrast, and after decades of oppression, the media in Indonesia is now the freest in South-East Asia, robustly pushing the old barriers on a wide range of social and political issues.

Despite doomsayers claiming Indonesia would become another Pakistan as fundamentalism flourished, that hasn’t happened. The battle against terrorism, with significant help from the Australian Federal Police, has notched up many wins against the bombers.

SBY’s push against corruption has had limited success; pulling out the wallet remains the standard way to bypass stalling bureaucrats at all levels.

The judiciary is still a mess, continuing to use colonial Dutch law from early last century. The over-staffed public service remains a dinosaur sturdily resisting attempts to force change. Decentralisation has compounded the confusion. Outsiders trying to do business need to tread warily.

The economy has slumped, though not as much as expected and less than other Asian nations. Poverty and poor quality education remain major concerns, although there have been patchwork successes in improving the lives of those on Kampong Bleak.

The consensus, both inside and outside the Republic seems to be that SBY has made a reasonable fist of handling one of the world’s toughest tasks – and given the line-up against him is clearly the best bloke around.

There are two standout dangers: If he wants to divorce Golkar and get a workable majority in the Parliament, SBY may be forced to cohabit with the PKS and other minor Islamic parties. This could let the extremist tail wag the reformist dog.

The other concern is that the opposition parties frustrated at their inability to find candidates with popular appeal may combine to spoil SBY’s legislative program out of spite. Success here seems less likely; though the emotion is real they’ll find it hard to work together because so many are single-issue or policy-free parties that have yet to learn the arts of compromise.


(First published in On Line Opinion, Friday 5 June 09)
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