CAN GIBRAN BE HIS OWN MAN?

 GOODISH GUY IN BAD COMPANY 

Gibran Rakabuming Raka is smarter than his stolid Dad Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo, President of our huge neighbour since 2014.  As Vice President Gibran could be a positive change agent - but that demands missionary zeal and the guts to challenge his dangerous leader . Does he have The Right Stuff?

 

In the lead-up to the 14 February national poll, a TV debate between Gibran and his older and more accomplished rivals showed the 36-year-old Mayor of Solo in Central Java is no daddy's shadow - as shown in the street posters - but an individual, a VP candidate in his own right.  

However, he's burdened by the company he keeps and the dirty dealings done to give him a shot at the big game. These issues distress the educated middle classes concerned with the erosion of democracy under Jokowi's reign;  sadly most voters won't care a dish of cold rice because nepotism and corruption are accepted as the Indonesian way even though it repels the ethical international investors the economy needs.

That won't change till any new president becomes an Indonesian version of the late Singapore PM Lee Kuan Yew (1959 - 1990) tough enough to burn bridges, stare down the threatening oligarchs and jail mates.  Chances of this happening are about the same as Trump turning to empathy.

After his everyman Dad beat elite opposition to head the world’s third largest democracy his team sought photo-ops with loving family. Gibran was a reluctant drag-in from his catering business.   He looked surly, a young man with better   things to do than play in a political pantomime.

Hot cakes must have done well because a few years later he revealed AUD 2.2 million in assets.  When Papa showed that politics pays better than kitchen toil  Gibran warmed to the addiction of  power.

Fo the sympathy vote Jokowi plays on his poor riverbank home history like Anthony Albanese uses his single-mum, council flat background. But unlike the PM’s story, the President’s oft-told tale sustains popularity ratings of around 80 per cent.  

So the tacticians got young Gibran to tag along with one of the old boys hoping Dad's lustre would rub off and add youth to the real candidate.

That should have been Ganjar Pranowo, the choice of the nationalist Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).  It’s Jokowi’s party and endorsed him twice but as he constitutionally can’t stand again chose the Governor of Central Java as his replacement.

Gibran is also a member of PDI-P but its axe-grinding matriarch Megawati Soekarnoputri (right) put hatred of Jokowi ahead of political sense and dubbed Mohammad Mahfud Mahmodin (Mahfud MD) as VP candidate.

A standard factory-made politician Mahfud was picked to draw Gen Z which covers around a third of the electors, with his supposed competence and experience.  He also hectors and his record repels.

In a separate forum, the 66-year old misogynist explained corruption this way:  “In many cases, husbands get involved in crimes because their wives are not good.” The coward’s defence: ‘She made me do it, ya honour’.

When the PDI-P door shut by Mega, Jokowi's ambitious offspring was seduced by Gerindra (Greater Indonesia), the party of cashiered general Prabowo Subianto.  He drives a jeep load of unresolved human rights allegations involving kidnappings and killings.  He's so ruthless he makes Peter Dutton look woke.

 Fabled Aesop wrote that “a man is known by the company he keeps”. Gibran has stained his nascent character.  To bypass regulations banning under 40s standing for high office there was an appeal to the Constitutional Court, conveniently chaired by his uncle  Anwar Usman.  Though the judge has since lost his job for a gross ethical breach, the decision stands.

Gibran has much to learn.  He prefers the teenage pout to the mature politicians’ ersatz smile. His rivals dub him anak ingusan (snotty child), but that’s not his TV image.  In the overlong over-managed debate he was calm, sharp, articulate, well-prepared and surprisingly confronting.

That breaks the Javanese code of respect for elders, suggesting he’s absorbed Western ways. That will annoy oldies but delight the young and restless.

He was educated in Singapore and Sydney (UTS) so should know about civil liberties -something his political partner fears.

So far he’s snubbed the foreign media.  After a stake-out ABC correspondent Bill Birtles only snagged a cursory "feeling confident" tossed out of a moving car’s window.

Though he follows all the rituals, Gibran is not known as a prisoner of religion. His other rival is Muhaimin “Cak Imin” Iskandar, chair of  the PKB (National Awakening) Islamic party.

His inclusion is supposed to magnetise the Muslim vote for Dr Anies Baswedan.  Indonesia has more Muslims than any other nation so conventional wisdom has meant pandering to this block in return for ‘wet’ (lucrative) ministries.

The political plotters have now discovered that the young are getting better educated and more inclined to pick candidates on merit rather than supposed piety. They don’t come structured so immune to payoffs.

This shrieks problems for Prabowo who has no idea who these voters are and what they want.  As a way to their hearts his media advisers have urged him to endorse a cartoon blob, the type used to sell toilet chemicals.

To transform from villain to jolly fellow he does TikTok moves.  These simulate bayonet charges.  Artists' makeovers turn Gibran sage and Prabowo, who’s old enough to be his grandfather, into a sibling.  The ad agencies’ contempt for voters is limitless.

Indonesia’s VPs are called ‘spare tyres’, not there to help with the steering.  They must stay in the boot and follow the last century duduk diam (siddown and shuddup) rule,  alien to Gibran’s progressive generation.

There’ll be confrontations; Gibran has no military background so won’t accept orders shouted by an autocrat demanding obedience.  Should Prabowo make it into the Jakarta White House, the impatient VP won’t stand around waiting for Allah to send the villainous  P to his place in the abyss.

Prabowo (with Jokowi, right) should be worried.  Like Cassius,  Gibran thinks too much; such men are dangerous. His first major public performance proves he runs his own show.  Local commentators reckon he'll be jerked by the strings held offstage by his dahlang (puppet master) Dad and continue the policies of infrastructure and development.

That assumption is open to doubt. Kompas media group polls put the undecideds close to 30 per cent.  Does this mean the electorate is getting more discriminating, better able to see through the fog of lies and crass diversions?   Let it be so.

 

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

 First published in Pearls & Irritations, 4 January 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/goodish-guy-in-bad-company/

FAREWELL TO INDONESIA'S POLITICAL ELITE?

Last post for the old guard?

Have Indonesia’s oligarchs performed their final farewell tour?  More than two decades after the fall of second president Soeharto’s authoritarian New Order government a commoner has retained the presidency.

The forecasts were close to spot-on; Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, 57, once a furniture factory owner from Central Java, has again defeated challenger former general Prabowo Subianto to win a second five years in office.

Bureaucrats are still thumbing through maybe 130 million or more voting slips from 800,000 booths, but all quick-counts show Jokowi with around a ten-point lead.  The official result won’t be known till May.

So far Prabowo’s team hasn’t made good on threats to call out the mobs. But it refuses to concede defeat.  Dangers lurk. 

Hot-tempered Prabowo is a bad loser.  He told reporters he expected 63 per cent of the vote.  He’s getting around 44 per cent. So the present figures, if confirmed, will eviscerate the hard-liner’s Trump-size ego.  Even if the streets stay calm the Constitution Court will be flat tack for months handling challenges.

Overall it seems the issues that kept mild-mannered Jokowi safe were economic, and not religious as anticipated. He also listened. Prabowo shouted.

Yesterday’s show has been a re-make of the 2009 election when sixth President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono scored a further spell in the palace. 

As in the US, the Constitution allows only two terms in the top job. So the former general had the opportunity to implement reform instead of handing out sweeteners and incinerating principles to enhance re-election.

He blew it.  For half a decade little happened because SBY didn’t want to queer the pitch for his soldier son.  Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono was pushed by family to grab the old fellow’s baton, but the pass was fumbled.

Not that it made much difference because SBY’s Democratic Party is waning fast.  So far no other mob can see the 45-year old’s leadership potential as paraded by his parents.

Maintaining personal political dynasties has long trumped public service as a driver for power in the world’s third largest democracy.  The Republic’s founder was Soekarno.  His daughter Megawati as vice president became the fifth president in 2001 when Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur) stepped down after being threatened with impeachment. 

She lost to SBY at the 2004 and 2009 elections and since then has been grooming her daughter Puan Maharani to stand when Jokowi retires in 2024.

At this stage her ambition seems doomed.  Puan, 45, Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Cultural Affairs in Jokowi’s first Cabinet (allegedly appointed at the insistence of Mum), is one dull polly.  She’s done little of note and is not a public favourite.

It seems unlikely that Prabowo, once Soeharto’s son-in-law, will try again for the top job in 2024 when he’ll be 72, more unfit and less rich. 

This means his quest to honor the fame of his late father Sumitro Djojohadikusumo also withers.  Dad was minister for the economy, and minister for research and technology under Soeharto.  The family claims Javanese aristocracy.

Prabowo’s only child is son Ragowo Hediprasetyo, 34, an unmarried fashion designer and socialite based in Paris and with no interest in politics or the army. Jokowi’s three kids are also staying clear of the dark arts and bang-bangs, so no power hand-downs here.

Will Jokowi now introduce the reforms he promised five years ago but didn’t deliver?  These are mainly human rights issues which haven’t ignited the general electorate, so change is unlikely.

The massive road, rail and port infrastructure programme will continue but sometime soon the Chinese and Japanese lenders will start to call in the debts.  To boost revenue the tax take needs to improve exponentially.

There are many anomalies.  Buy a meal in a McDonald’s or KFC and find a ten per cent levy on the meal, while local restaurants nearby don’t include the impost. Only 38 million people (the population is above 260 million) reportedly pay tax, so most have little idea of the philosophy, and even less enthusiasm.

In the West death and taxes are inescapable.  In Indonesia it’s only the grave.

Food costs are rising because much is imported.  Java is extraordinarily fertile but farming remains stubbornly manual.  Jokowi has socialist leanings and will give more business to state-owned enterprises, though that last word is a misnomer.  Few are slim get-up-and-go outfits.

Corruption continues despite arrests of high level officials and long prison terms.  Here’s a chance for the President to make a difference, but so far few signs of the determination needed. Jokowi and his backers don’t have the political will for change shown by the late Lee Kuan Yew in his successful purge of graft in Singapore.

Jokowi has been little concerned with foreign affairs.  Whoever wins next month’s Australian election will face a tough slog to get the President seriously interested in working with his neighbour.

Education remains a total mess.  This is well understood; the system needs a top-to-toe shake-up.  If second-term Jokowi can exercise the muscle his legacy will be the generations ahead equipped to handle the future.

Practically it’s payback time, so the next task will be distributing goodies (mainly Cabinet posts) to the nine parties that backed the largely secular Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) (around 25 per cent of the vote), and its candidate Jokowi.  Prabowo’s Gerindra Party (12 per cent) had a coalition of four, mainly Islamic.

The worry is that ultra-conservative cleric and new vice president Ma’ruf Amin, 76, will try to enforce even stricter Islamic codes on the nation.  Then Bali’s partyland lights could start to dim, forcing Western hedonists to seek other lands to empty their pockets.

It could also put the frighteners under Australian unis keen to help get the nation’s clapped out tertiary sector back on the road.  Who’d push if the driver hates gays, liberals and pluralism?

If the left-overs from last century’s non-democratic Indonesia really retreat to their villa verandahs, the names to watch are all middle aged, smart, articulate, cosmopolitan, religious moderates and civilian: 

Anies Baswedan, currently Governor of Jakarta, Ridwan Kamil, Governor of West Java, and Sandiago Uno, the megarich businessman who was Prabowo’s sidekick. 

If they get the tick in five years, then Indonesia will have really made a break with the past.

##

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 18 April 2019: http://johnmenadue.com/duncan-graham-last-post-for-the-old-guard/

WILL VIOLENCE FOLLOW INDONESIA'S ELECTION RESULTS?

                                                           After the count, chaos?

The alphabet of election campaign hyperbole runs from Absurd through Fatuous and Stupid to Zero (as in logic).  Most statements are ephemeral for the nonsense spruikers know little is taken seriously once the losers are trampled by the triumphant.

But in Indonesia pledges by the former champion of the 1998 ‘People’s Power Revolution’ are causing deep disquiet.  

Dr Amien Rais has announced that if the 17 April poll results in a win for incumbent Joko Widodo – as expected - and there’s any hint of funny business, he’ll unleash mass protests on behalf of challenger Prabowo Subianto rather than follow the legal appeal process. 

‘If fraud happens we will not go to the Constitutional Court,’ he said.  ‘There is no point. We are people power. People power is legitimate.’


The presidential contest is a re-run of the 2014 event between the same contenders. When Widodo won by six percentage points Subianto refused to admit defeat for almost three months, filing challenges through the Constitutional Court.  All failed.

Fraud has already been detected.  The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) this month claimed it caught one candidate with thousands of cash-stuffed envelopes ready to bribe voters.

Had anyone else made the ‘people power’ threat it could be dismissed as a tactic to frighten electors into supporting Subianto, a former general who’s been promoting a Trump-style tough guy nativist image.

But Rais is no campaign minion.  He’s a seasoned political engineer who was the public face and voice of the 1998 mass movement which crushed dictator Soeharto’s 32-year dictatorship.

Although then in his mid 50s, the US-educated leader of the nation’s second largest Muslim organization Muhammadiyah excited the rebellious tertiary students.  Their huge demonstrations – along with the international monetary crisis – brought the nation’s second president undone.

Rais started the National Mandate Party (PAN) and pitched for the top job.  He failed and has spent this century in politics and academia trying to retrieve his glory days.  Now 75 his statement has chilled observers fearing he’s scene-setting for a re-run of the arson, killings and rapes following Soeharto’s downfall. 

The rioters mainly targeted ethnic Chinese businesses.  More than 1,000 died in Jakarta. Most were looters caught in torched high-rises.

The army says it has almost half a million troops on stand-by to thwart trouble.  The police are mustering a similar number.  Both are now more professional and better led than in 1998 when rioters outnumbered and intimidated security forces.

General Joni Supriyanto, chief of the army’s general staff reportedly said ‘the people of Indonesia are much smarter nowadays, more modern, but they are also more patriotic …mature enough in democracy.’

He’s probably right; despite the slanders on social media there’s been little obvious hostility in the cities I’ve visited across Java and Bali during the campaign.  Most rallies have been policy-free fun shows with audiences allegedly paid to flag-wave. However hearing Subianto scream antiasing at an event was disturbing.

The phrase was pure Pauline Hanson; it suggests foreigners are responsible for whatever evils he alleges the country is facing – in this case the Republic’s natural resources being plundered by outsiders.

White faces outside Bali are still rare enough to arouse attention, but so far there’s no indication Subianto’s slurs have taken root.  It might be different for those who look Chinese.

Absent from the speeches has been any meaningful statements about equality, the environment, human rights, women’s emancipation, respect for others, and inclusiveness.  

Not surprising as Subianto has been accused of human rights abuses during his term in the army last century. The Western media cliché is that Indonesian Muslims are tolerant.  Not the Indonesian Ulema (Islamic scholars) Council (MUI), formerly led by Widodo’s running mate Ma’ruf Amin.

Under his watch it issued fatwa (an Islamic legal instruction) against pluralism, homosexuality, and those who practise Shi’ite Islam, the majority religion in Iran, Iraq and Azerbaijan.  Indonesians are mainly Sunni.  

There’s an estimated one million Shi’ite followers in the archipelago; they’re labelled heretics and brutally persecuted, their homes torched and families forced into‘re-education’ camps.

The prime target for the main parties in the election has been Muslims, and principally men. Both candidates and their backers have been stirring faith and prayer into the secular business of democracy.  There are some women candidates, but psephologists predict few will win seats.

Christians, Hindus, Confucians and Buddhists form only ten per cent of the population of 270 million; away from the eastern islands where these religions dominate, they’ve been largely ignored.

There’s now a campaign blackout ahead of the Wednesday ballot.  In the 2014 election  70 per cent of the 193 million eligible voters participated. For the best analysis of the whole shebang see Ben Bland’s comprehensive and readable essay here: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/politics-indonesia-resilient-elections-defective-democracy

(First published in Pearls and Irritations, 16 April 2019.  See: http://johnmenadue.com/duncan-graham-indonesia-after-the-count-chaos/  )

RI POLITICS REVVING UP

ROBBING ROADS TO KEEP RICE CHEAP  

Unlike their southern neighbours, Indonesians know when they’ll go to the polls - 17 April 2019. That Wednesday will be a public holiday to encourage a big turn out.  Voting is not compulsory.

In the 2014 election 135 million electors punched a hole in a ballot paper to make their choice - around 70 per cent of those on the roll - in the world’s third largest democracy.  

Next year voters aged over 17 will get the chance to directly elect the president, 580 members of the People’s Consultative Assembly (known as the DPR) and 128 to the Regional Assembly, (DPD). 

Fifteen parties will bid for seats but there are only two rematch contestants for the top job - incumbent Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, 57, and former general Prabowo Subianto, 67, who lost his 2014 bid by just under seven per cent.

Though campaigning is not supposed to start till 13 October, jostling is well underway.  Now is the time for Australia to keep its head down; if we get dragged into the contest the collateral damage to relationships could be lasting.

For the opening of last month’s well-staged Asian Games, a video mock-up of Widodo powering a Yamaha FZ1 motorbike through Jakarta’s traffic quagmire to get to the event was a big hit.

A stunt man masquerading as the President flipped the 1,000 cc machine over traffic jams and weaved around blocks, a lift from Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible minus the gunfire.

One brief edit showed Widodo’s left hand and wedding ring - a shot at his divorced rival; the significance of the cutaway didn’t escape viewers in a society where marital status is a critical factor for candidates’ credibility.

Though not financial cleanliness.  At last count 33 general election contestants from 13 parties had been convicted for looting state funds.  

In Malang, the second largest city in East Java, 41 of the 45 local councilors have been charged with corruption by the national graft-buster, the Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (Corruption Eradication Commission).

Although it has put hundreds behind bars and is widely supported by the public, the KPK is struggling to change a culture where cheats prosper;  five years ago Indonesia ranked 107 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index.  It’s now 96 of the 180 nations measured  (Australia is 13th, New Zealand the cleanest in first place.)

In many jurisdictions a criminal record would disbar candidates for high office.   Not in Indonesia where a Supreme Court ruling this month overturned an Electoral Commission regulation banning corruptors from standing.

Accusing political rivals of jangling keys to the public vaults is not the most effective assault; real woundings are made through charges of having Communist sympathies.  As the party has been banned since 1965 when Widodo was four years old, the tactic is to smear his late father Notomiharjo.

Grainy doctored photos have been circulating on social media.  These allegedly show  Dad a bystander at Red rallies before a coup against founding President Soekarno put the dictator General Soeharto into power for 32 years.

The other ploy is to claim contestants aren’t true Muslims. Neither Widodo nor Subianto is known for excessive piety, but the latter is more vulnerable because there were Christians in his family. 

The fall-back for Subianto’s urgers is a video featuring aging politicians awkwardly singing that it’s time for change - for no good reason as alternative policies are not in the lyrics.

Subianto’s Gerindra Party and its coalition partners are stirring nationalism, claiming the current administration is getting too matey with outsiders, not just the Chinese but all foreigners.  This is where Australia is susceptible.  

Even if our politicians refrain from castigating Muslims, and Ozzie teens lay off drugs in Bali, there’s enough old baggage, dating back to our support for the 1999 East Timor referendum. waiting to be unpacked by xenophobes.

On present polling Widodo is a shoe-in, but much will happen in seven months, particularly as politicians and parties often swap sides.  Many Western commentators stress the importance of religion, but voters are now better educated and prepared to separate faith and state in a private polling booth.

The rupiah has fallen nine per cent against the US dollar this year and is the worst performing economy in the region. To offset the risks of angering the poor by upping the outlay for basics, the government has been shoveling out subsidies.

To do this it’s been robbing the budgets for capital works that Widodo pledged to improve when campaigning in 2014.

The state oil company Pertamina has been hit by higher costs for importing oil, which it should have passed on to consumers.  Instead the pump price has been propped up to avoid revving-up motorists.

Taxes have been hiked on consumer goods.  Some household items are now well above the cost of similar goods in Australian supermarkets, but these aren’t essentials, like rice, cooking oil, sugar and meat.

Big infrastructure projects are still going ahead - obvious to any voter who takes a long-distance train or road trip and gets held up by earth-movers.  Much of the money is coming from China and the debt is growing fast.

Whoever wins next April will likely inherit a fiscal volcano threatening to blow, 

with the potential to create economic and social instability.

(First published in Pearls and Irritations, 18 September 2018 See: http://johnmenadue.com/duncan-graham-robbing-roads-to-keep-rice-cheap/