MORE JAKARTA, LESS CANBERRA

     From blusukan to bland in five years

There are some cheering on-line videos worth checking from 2015 when Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull visited Jakarta.

President Joko Widodo took his guest to the vast Tanah Abang textile market for an unscripted blusukan, the Indonesian leader’s common-touch trade mark.  Ties and jackets vanished along with protocols as friendly crowds pressed close.  Apart from the over-taxed security detail, all seemed to be having genuine fun.

Less informal but still jolly are slides from two years later when Widodo and Iriana, both splendid in batik, were welcomed by the Turnbulls.  They camped at Kirribilli House and shared the Sydney sights like middle-aged couples, old pals on hols together.

Match these images against the hand-out pix from Widodo’s two-day wifeless visit to Canberra this month.  The thin smiles are there along with balmy words about friendship, cooperation and common goals - plus more fresh-start pledges than the Sydney-Melbourne high speed rail. 

All fine and worthy, yet it’s clear the natural warmth has evaporated.  Morrison is good on glee and bonhomie while Widodo is reserved.  Like most cultures which favour reading faces rather than books, the Javanese are canny assessors of character.  Morrison is the President’s third PM.

Widodo stayed in the Hyatt.  He was given a fixed bayonet welcome to Government House where Governor General David Hurley spoke competently in Indonesian.

Despite this the President’s look said: ‘I want nasi goreng on the table, not another ten-point plan.’  It’s well known he’s more at home with domestic infrastructure, largely leaving foreign affairs to Minister Retno Marsudi.

Widodo’s briefing notes would have reminded that in an earlier army career the GG commanded the 1st Brigade from 1999-2000 in Darwin.  The job was supporting Australian-led operations in East Timor against crazed Indonesian-backed militia, furious that a referendum had backed independence.

The impression of reluctantly doing duty rather than energetically building rapport was reinforced when Widodo refused to talk to the media and through us the Australian people.   According to Lowy Institute surveys most Aussies know little about their big neighbour and have even less trust.  The reverse is probably true.

Avoiding journos was not a smart move when Indonesia is being touted as a starburst of democracy in a darkening Southeast Asia. Here was a chance to answer critics and show some convictions.

He’d have known local hacks would ask why he’s backed laws fettering the Corruption Eradication Commission, and why they can’t visit West Papua despite earlier promises of allowing press entry. 

By now the elected head of the world’s fourth largest nation should have the confidence to handle tough questions and show his other side.  He’s into big bikes and heavy metal music.  He’s from a poor family, outside the oligarchy and military which wield most power.

Widodo addressed the Parliament with a bland speech.  (Australian media said he used ‘Bahasa’, explaining this meant ‘Indonesian’.  It doesn’t – it’s the word for ‘language’.)

It was less than half the length of his predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s rousing delivery in English at the same forum ten years earlier.  This sent commentators thumbing thesauri for ‘new era’ synonyms.

While the mateship was surging Australian spies were doing their damnedest to undermine optimism by tapping the home phone of SBY, a most pro-Australian president. 

The buggers were caught out in 2013 through documents leaked by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. For a while that kicked the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement negotiations off field.

This month Widodo brought a big gift – the signed agreement   The free trade deal has taken ten years to write, edit, print and bind. Implementation is due by mid-May and should be a plus for both nations – though mainly benefiting Australian wheat and beef farmers.

The other good news is that Monash Uni will open a post-grad campus in Jakarta. The first intake is planned for late next year.  Other tertiary institutions are also keen but waiting to see whether this education experiment will work.

Widodo hopes the IA-CEPA will encourage Australians to invest.  Right now only the bold and brash will risk money in a country where stuffed envelopes fast-track government permits, and the rule of law can be bent with the weight of enough rupiah.

He’s also seeking a relaxation of harsh rules which aren’t applied to Singaporeans and Malaysians; they pay $20 for an on-line visa against $140 for Indonesians plus 15-page questionnaires. Australians get a free visa-on-arrival in Bali. 

The two Commonwealth nations together send almost 500,000 visitors a year while only 100,000 Indonesians bother to buy tickets south. As Indonesia Institute president Ross Taylor said in Perth:  ‘If they won’t come here, how do we get to know each other?’

Morrison said he’d look into it.  Outback Aborigines in WA used to neatly skewer any city politician using that cliché with the tag ‘Mr Mirrorman.’  As reported on this blog (https://johnmenadue.com/abul-rizvi-morrison-impotent-on-visa-arrangements-for-indonesians/ ) the President shouldn’t bother sitting by the phone.

Widodo in his second and final five-year term no longer has blusukan on his schedules.  Fear of terrorists now determines the agenda.  Last October two fanatics stabbed Security Minister Wiranto during a low-key visit to Banten, Java’s western province.  He has since recovered.

The attack has further screwed down security and put even more space between electors and elected.  Back in his White House Widodo announced an estimated 600 Indonesian ISIS supporters who went to Syria won’t be allowed home with their hates.

In 2013 PM Tony Abbott declared his foreign policy as ‘more Jakarta and less Geneva’.  Based on Widodo’s performance Down Under this month, the President is probably muttering:  ‘More Jakarta and less Canberra’. 

 First published in Pearls and Irritations, 14 February 2020
https://johnmenadue.com/duncan-graham-from-blusukan-to-bland-in-five-years/

RI & OZ ON SAME PAGE - BRIEFLY

Smiles for now, but miles to go                         

It was good to see.

Edging gingerly from impartial commentator to partial citizen, the sight of Sydneysiders Scott and Jenny Morrison at the Presidential inauguration fleetingly eased one journo’s heart, corroded from witnessing too many erosions of goodwill.

What appeared to be the only white faces in the VIP rows of Asians, Arabs and Africans sent a positive signal, as the diplomats’ cliché goes.  The Prime Minister’s presence said: 

Australia shares the triumph of the people’s will in the world’s third largest democracy.

With the exception of China, which cares nothing for democracy but still sent Vice-President Wang Qishan, most nations outside the region didn’t bother, or made gestures, not statements.  Donald Trump’s envoy was Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.   She’s 14^th in the Presidential line of succession.

Lots to read here.

Back home the ScoMos and the Widodos got a page-top family snap in the national daily The Australian, plus a happy-clapper crowd pic and crisp analysis from correspondent Amanda Hodge.

Not quite up to the matey 2015 coverage when Morrison’s predecessor Malcolm Turnbull shared a blusukan (walkabout) in Tanah Abang market with President Joko Widodo, but a refresher for the often volatile relationship between two vastly different cultures.

Remember PM Tony Abbott proclaiming ‘more Jakarta, less Geneva’ in 2013? Soon after everything tumbled like Humpty Dumpty off the wall of good intentions when spy agencies were caught tapping President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s phone

Before he left for his one-day in Jakarta, Morrison said the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement was about to get the green light in Canberra, so hoped Jakarta was also clear to go.

Widodo reportedly replied ‘no issues’, though that’s still uncertain as Indonesia has a new parliament.

Although free trade topped Morrison’s list he has another agenda, according to Ambassador Gary Quinlan (right).  He told The Jakarta Post that the PM wants his nation’s citizens to “see Islam through Indonesian eyes.”

Morrison plans to tell Australians that the Islam practised by almost 90 per cent of Indonesia’s 270 million people is “moderate, tolerant and inclusive”.

Quinlan said on an earlier visit the PM had explained his personal commitment to interfaith dialogue to Widodo as a major way to improve relations between the countries and “as a model of how two close neighbours can be a beacon to others”.

If Morrison follows through and uses the PM pulpit to talk about Islam, the Liberal Party leader will be finding turnoffs. In last year’s Australian census more than 30 per cent said they had no religion; the number increases with every national stocktake.

A ‘Worldviews of Generation Z’ study last year by Australian academics found that although teens generally accepted religious diversity, many were concerned about the impact of religion on life in Australia.

 Just 2.3 per cent of Australia’s 25 million people say they’re Muslims. Islam tends to get a bad press as extremists draw the flashlights.  This has distorted understanding of the complexities and riches of a religion followed by a quarter of the world’s population.

Almost 90 per cent of the people next door are Muslims – a fact Australians need to accept and understand if the neighbors are going to go beyond trading goods and develop friendships.

Australian politicians tend to mute their religious views for fear of alienating advocates for separation of State and faith.  Morrison may be the ideal advocate for Islam; he’s upfront about his evangelical Pentecostal Christian beliefs so mud thrown by Islamophobes alleging he’s a covert Muslim won’t stick.

During the Federal election this year, Morrison broke with long-standing political wisdom that prayer should be private.  Instead he invited the media to witness him vigorously proclaiming the Gospel in his local Horizon church in suburban Sydney.

He said he prayed for victory – and got his present.

Quinlan said Government-to-Government relations were “very good with a new level of maturity on the political calculus.  Both countries are heavily involved in solving problems and having a strategic sense of each other.

“However improving people-to-people relationships is a big challenge because it depends ultimately on the attitudes of Australians and Indonesians to each other, not just on government policy.”

His concerns are underpinned by this year’s Lowy Institute survey of Australian public attitudes.  The poll asked Australians about their country’s ‘best friend in the world’.  New Zealand topped the list ahead of the US and UK.  Four per cent of respondents said ‘China’, just one per cent ‘Indonesia’.

Despite more than a million antipodeans breasting Bali’s bars and beaches every year, the Institute says its long-term polling ‘has demonstrated the wariness with which Australians and Indonesians regard each other.’

 “We have to move on - there’s too much ignorance among many Australians about Indonesia, often based on out-of-date images,” Quinlan said. “Indonesia is growing so quickly and developing so fast, there’s widespread creative energy among young Indonesians. We need to tap more of this potential, especially for young Australians.”

Quinlan urged more Australians and Indonesians to experience each other’s countries and to speak out about the success of contemporary Indonesia, but recognized many were media shy.

“I hope having the PM explain Indonesian Islam will help dispel the ignorance.”

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First published in The Jakarta Post 26 October 2019