WHAT TO DO WITH THE OLDIES? HERE THERE'S ONLY FAMILY CARE

 

Doing aged care differently

Our street in Indonesia has 70 households. Many are mixed generation families.  With few nursing homes or retirement villages, and those far away, families have two options: The kids do the caring, or employ a carer.  Either way Grandpa or Grandma stays home.

Sawojajar is eight degrees under the Equator and a suburb of Malang, an East Java hilltown nudging one million.  Days start with the 4.15 call to prayer.  An hour later as the sun crests the mountains, the street’s five elderly and infirm men are wheeled out of the houses they once lorded, or shuffled into plastic chairs. 

There’s no sense of abandonment, more a welcome back. Parked in the shade of mango trees the old fellows expect to finish their days where they’ve lived among familiar faces, sounds, sights and smells. Here they’re obvious to all, spectators of the daily parade yet also participants.

With no public parks or pavement the bitumen is the community room, an oval, a market, an open-air hall, a thoroughfare.  There’s much to hear and see, and not one event has been organized by a social welfare consultant.

A quarter of Australians are reported to be lonely. No similar studies in Indonesia where mental health isn’t a front-page issue, but chances are there’d be only a few suffering solitude – and certainly not in this street.

Indonesians engage easily with strangers.  The watchers outside their wrought-iron fences advise reversing drivers of hazards, direct strangers to the right address, hold parcels for absent residents and act as human CCTVs.

The steps into familiarity start with asking where the visitor’s going, leading to questions about the family’s origins, age, the number of children and religion.  If privacy is precious, don’t retire in Indonesia.

This isn’t an attractive street, just rising above the average, middling middle class, homes mostly owned by the occupiers. The houses were badly built on a rice field in the 1990s so there’s much repairing and expanding.  Tradies weld, mix concrete and cut timber on the road.  Workers are always watchable and cheerfully accept unsought advice.

The live-in helpers (AUD 150 / a month) and grannies left behind when Dads and Mums head to work, shuffle around in shapeless housecoats caring little about their appearance for the black-top is their backyard.  They’ve already done the laundry; the clothes drying on the fence reveal who sports G-strings and fancy bras.

Now the plague has closed classrooms the kids have turned the street into a sports centre. They practise pushbike stunts, whack shuttlecocks, kick barefoot goals marked by flip-flops on the asphalt.   The granddads keep score and shout tactics.

Health is an issue for the elderly so there’s Ibu Jamu carrying a basket of bottles on her head, stirring a secret herbal mix to guarantee longevity and fix most moans - a sore back, inflamed throat, headaches and every ailment in-between.  Maybe even Covid-19.

She blends her patient’s personal supplement, revealing juicy news of others’ complaints while the customer drains the glass.  There’s a free health clinic a couple of km away, but Ibu Jamu is alongside.

So is a mobile shop.  A middle-aged woman pushes a four-wheel cart stocked with household necessities from soap powder to salt. Dad can get his ciggies, or the Jawa Pos without asking anyone to do errands.

Raps on a hollow log announce the bakso (meatball soup) cook.  He’ll boil a breakfast broth on his kaki Lima (five foot) pushcart and serve the retirees where they sit. 

Hawkers’ barrows are everyone’s news hub, the place to update on disputes and dramas, to plug into sagas of straying husbands, barren wives and wayward teens.  The oldies are always in the loop, in the rhythm of life.

There are no government home care packages.   Only former public servants, the military and employees of big corporations get pensions, and they’re small. 

A 2020 report by a team from Yogyakarta’s Gadjah Mada University claims only the government and a few non-profits provide residential care: ‘However, the term ‘nursing home’ has been embedded in Indonesian society as a place to live for elderly who are poor, are neglected, and do not have families, so it shows unfavourable stigma.’

Almost two thirds of Indonesian men smoke, with lung diseases taking an estimated half a million lives a year.  That was before Covid-19.   Four heart attack victims (three were heavy users) have recovered some speech. One seems to have dementia, but isn’t ignored.

When it gets too hot or wet (we’re eight degrees below the Equator) the seniors get pushed or steered indoors, hoping they’ll make it to the morrow. World Bank stats show women’s life expectancy is 74 years and men’s 69.4. Add a decade for the Australian figures.

Departure day comes with a black cross on a white flag. All go to the house, discreetly leave an envelope, console the widow across the open-coffined corpse in the lounge, praying together whatever the family’s faith.  The deceased lived with us, so died among us. He belonged.

What did he die from?  Only a foreigner would ask such a silly question:  Allah called.  More important to inquire the time of his passing and final words, because these can be interpreted to have special meanings.

This is neither Struggle Street nor Pleasantville. There’s nothing romantic or admirable about how the neighbourhood runs – it’s standard and the elderly don’t get shielded from the realities.

There’s a couple of snobs.  Parking sometimes causes mild friction. Real or imagined insults get stored and not all have a use-by date. The idle remember family scandals and religious conversions from last century and keen to update newcomers.

Semi-feral felines rip apart plastic rubbish bags for chicken bones. Scrumpers get lured by the mango trees, so some have been felled angering greenies.  Unswept leaves irritate the fastidious. Yet it’s rare to encounter threats to move.

The Great Australian Fear of millions of Asians fleeing their ghettos and swamping the empty land below does not apply to the Javanese.  Though their island is already one of the world’s most overpacked, they’re homebodies.

Sawojajar is where they’ve lived for decades and where they’ll die, not grouped apart by age or disability but mixing daily with the newborns, the itinerant traders, the kids growing up, the passers-by, the riches and routines, sad times and jolly events.  The idea they should be separated is abhorrent

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 9 March 2021: https://johnmenadue.com/australia-could-learn-a-thing-or-two-from-indonesias-personalised-approach-to-aged-care/

 

 

 

 

CRITICS TAKE CARE - JUST SEND COMPLIMENTS

        Messengers beware

The first who told of Lucullus ' coming so angered Tigranes that he had the messenger’s head, effectively ensuring no-one brought bad news. Deprived of fresh intelligence Tigranes watched while war raged, listening only to flatterers.

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Even if Indonesian activists haven’t read Plutarch's Life of Lucullus they’d recognise their predicaments when facing President Joko Widodo, stand-in for the first century BC King of Armenia. 

Widodo comes across as humble, serious about improving the sprawling archipelago’s infrastructure.   His determination to build roads, rails and ports deserves applause, which he enjoys.

Unfortunately he hasn’t done well at social engineering and pandemic control, so no clapping.  He’s had a Chinese Covid-19 jab, but that’s ineffective against the virus of hubris.  So when he asked for public feedback, few have been brave.

The infection originated from media tycoon and Nasdem (National Democrat) Party founder Surya Paloh, 69, whose role is kingmaker, not candidate.  He’s from the north Sumatra province of Aceh; the convention has only Javanese in Jakarta’s White House.

Shortly after Widodo won the top job standing for the Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan (Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle), Paloh suggested the Constitution be changed, letting the President serve more than two five-year terms.

Widodo said ‘no’, knowing he’d never get backing from his party’s matriarch Megawati Soekarnoputri, 74.  She wants her dull daughter Puan Maharani, 47, currently Speaker of the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR House of Representatives) to contest the presidency in the 2024 election.

Paloh’s obsequiousness must have gone to Widodo’s head because he’s losing his sheen as a man of the people.  This image once put clear air between himself and his arrogant rival, former General Prabowo Subianto, beating the oligarch 55 to 45 per cent in the direct vote.

In 2015 during his first term Widodo hosted Malcolm Turnbull, showing off his commoner’s credentials by taking the PM on a signature blusukan. This was a supposedly unstaged public market meet-the-wee-folk walkabout.  Those stunts are long gone as Widodo becomes more aloof.

The blusukan delighted a tie-less Turnbull who snapped selfies with cheerful traders.  However it horrified the security detail trying to handle the unconstrained crowds.  The crew cuts who wear sunnies at night and think this makes them invisible, started urging more discipline.

They weren’t alone.  Jakarta palace functionaries had been urging their boss to be esteemed by all, and not just the riff-raff.  A preferred portrayal would be more like Kim Jong-un surrounded by fawning geriatric generals scribbling down the Dear Leader’s inspiring instructions as he tours another missile site.

No journos in those staged shots from Pyongyang. In Jakarta the unkempt media youngsters thrusting smartphones don’t show enough respect for the guy who runs the world’s third largest democracy.

In 2018 a law was passed making it illegal to ‘disrespect Parliament or its members’. Unnecessary - just tickle an old one – the 2008 Informasi dan Transaksi Elektronik (ITE) Law.  It’s supposed to regulate on-line deals, but includes a defamation and insults clause with up to four-years jail for offenders.

After autocrat Soeharto quit in 1998, new media legislation gave some protection to journos and publishers facing malicious litigants. The independent National Press Council was tasked with settling disputes outside the courts.  However the ITE law takes precedence.

Rights’ activists reckon this threatens free speech. Andre Arditya , political editor of The Conversation’s Indonesian edition, wrote: ‘The ITE Law is one of the largest barriers to freedom of expression in Indonesia. The article of defamation and the article of hate speech in the ITE Law are most widely used as the basis for criminal reporting.

 

‘ ... (Widodo has) completely ignored criticism from the public against him. If there is a response, it usually takes the form of threats, intimidation and arrest of critics.’

In 2018 a teenager in Sumatra was reportedly sentenced to 18 months jail for insulting Widodo on Facebook. Last year South Kalimantan on-line local media editor Diananta Putra Sumedi was sentenced to 14 weeks jail for his reporting of a land dispute, even though the Press Council had apparently resolved the issue.

Last year Amnesty International claimed to have found 29 cases of harassment and intimidation against academics and journos across two months:

‘The right to freedom of expression has already been on a decline in Indonesia in recent years, which is exemplified by the increasing number of people convicted of defamation, blasphemy and makar (treason) simply for expressing their opinions online or organizing peaceful protests between 2014 and 2019.’

Widodo has neutered parliamentary criticism by making Subianto Defence Minister, and handing goodies to small parties.  Veteran Australian academic and writer Max Lane, who lives in Indonesia, has listed the President’s surviving antagonists: ‘The social justice wing of civil society – human rights and environmental NGOs, student activists and the smaller more activist trade unions – and some media, such as the Tempo group.’ .

As in Australia, defamation is an arena to play word games.  In Indonesia it’s been used against journos who expose government corruption, big business wrongdoings and remind potential investors that hazards abound in the Republic’s rugged corporate and legal jungle.

Reporters Sans Frontiéres’ World Press Freedom Index puts Indonesia 119 among 180 countries. (Australia is 28^th.)  The Economist Intelligence Unit has Indonesia recording the lowest democracy score for 14 years.  Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index ranks Indonesia 102 out of 180 countries.

Widodo may be getting concerned about overseas perceptions of his democracy lest they impact on his bid for more foreign investors, already spooked by his mishandling of the pandemic, putting health of the economy above the wellbeing of citizens.   

Human Rights Watch says the response has been ‘weak, with low testing and tracing rates, and little transparency.’  Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Centre reports 1.3 million cases and close to 35,000 deaths, the highest levels in Southeast Asia.

In a speech earlier this month Widodo pondered the possibility of asking the DPR to revise the ITE law ‘if it is proven that the legislation has not provided a sense of justice.’

So far little has happened apart from delegating a police chief to write guidelines, possibly not the ideal person to advise on free speech and media rights.

Widodo’s comments are, as usual, too vague to decode with certainty.  Does the President want the ITE Law to be refined to appease critics – or further strengthened to shut them down?  The man is Javanese, and his words fit a culture which is famously opaque.  Tigranes was too direct.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 3 March 2021: https://johnmenadue.com/thin-skinned-widodo-messengers-beware/

 

 

 

 

DV PROBS? HANG IN THERE, WE'RE THINKING

                    No rush – the women can wait.

Five years ago a Bill was put before Indonesia’s 575 Lower House (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat) MPs urging them to penalise sexual violence. Activists stressed the need for urgency as the scourge was increasing.  They’re still waiting.

Pessimists’ fears were amplified when 430,000 plus cases were reported in 2019, and even more since the coronavirus has sent millions unemployed, fracturing families and stoking stress. 

Activists say these numbers are hillocks and the real figures mountainous as few speak out.  Support for battered wives is rare, and in suburbs and villages where families are packed close, bedroom battles swiftly become public property.  Then all know who’s at fault.  Guess what? It’s rarely the fellow.

In 2018  Baiq Nuril Maknun, a primary school teacher in Lombok, recorded her principal’s  sexual harassment.   Although a confidante had put the story on-line against Maknun’s wishes, she was sentenced to six months jail for distributing immoral material before being given a presidential pardon. Her boss was acquitted.

Indonesia ranks just behind the Philippines as the most dangerous nation for women in the Indo-Pacific.  That’s according to a survey by the Singapore-based research company ValueChampion. Reasons include inadequate assault laws, social inequality and poor health care. 

The Indonesian Criminal Code defines the offence of rape, though not abuse, exploitation, slavery and online harassment.   The idea of marital rape has still to be widely accepted.

Because the proposed legislation gives women the right to say ‘no’, opponents have argued this would lead men – who are supposed to have a greater sex drive - seeking relief outside wedlock and so exacerbate the situation.

Despite tentative backing by the two main secular parties, PDI-P and Golkar, it seems the bill won’t be debated this year.  Fundamentalists assert changes will upset the nation’s moral purity and pollute its culture with vile Western perversions.  

These include casual sex, same-sex marriage, unmarried couples living together and community acceptance of gays, all bundled together under the tag seks bebas (free sex).

Support for reform is strong if a study involving 2,200 respondents is to be accepted.  Research by the International Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID) and the Indonesian Judicial Research Society (IJRS) reported around 70 per cent back the Bill.

The scepticism is fuelled by the small sample and the distinct difference between the values of urban respondents and rural residents.  Almost half the population lives outside the big cities.

The reality known to all change agents is that 88 per cent of the population claims to follow Islam.  That huge cohort in a republic of 270 million wields political clout.  

Just as Australians get their impressions of the world’s fourth largest nation through media clips of floods, volcanoes and drug busts in Bali, so the Indonesian press tends to highlight stories about perceived permissiveness, as though Oz is defined by sex scandals.

Homosexuality isn’t illegal in Indonesia, but consenting adults are regularly harassed by clerics and their zealous followers.  In orthodox  Aceh gays get whipped in public.  Last month two late-20s men in a consensual relationship were beaten 77 times each.  Five thrashers were involved to avoid tiring the torturers. 

President Joko Widodo has publicly said he wants the brutality to stop. It continues, and draws tourists.  His writ is supposed to cover the whole archipelago of 6,000 occupied islands, but the north Sumatra province goes its own way.

During his 32 years in power the late President Soeharto tried his hand at social engineering by defining the roles of men and women: the bapak-bapak brought home the rupiah, the ibu-ibu kept the house and kids clean and fed, and the bed ready.  It was called Ibuism (‘Ibu’ means mother) and ensured women were tied to sink, stove and cradle. 

Their approved community involvement was through the Dharma Wanita (women’s duty) organisation where a member’s status depended on her man’s job.   If he had a high position in a government office his spouse could boss around other wives, whatever her age, education and leadership skills.

Since Soeharto’s departure in 1998 women have dashed ahead, though progress is uneven.  Dharma Wanita has gone and the General Elections Law mandates 30 percent of candidates for national and regional legislatures must be women.  That doesn’t mean they get pre-selected for winnable seats.

Constitutionally Indonesia is a democratic secular republic. It’s not a Gulf State and has women running major corporations and holding powerful Cabinet positions.  Between 2001 and 2004 Megawati Soekarnoputri, a daughter of first President Soekarno, ruled as fifth president. More up-to-date standouts include Foreign Affairs Minister Retno  Marsudi, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati and Manpower Minister Ida Fauziyah. 

Despite the latter lady’s title, her job does include woman power. Around 53 per cent  aged 15 and above are in the workforce compared to 82 percent of men. (The Australian figures are 60.7 and 70.9 percent.  However they are suspect because many work part-time.

Yet behind the modernity lurks a patriarchal tradition which puts men as family heads, women subservient to their needs, and prioritises community calm above personal distress. 

The women’s lobby wants the reasoning behind the bill articulated through government campaigns, specifically to explain that sexual violence is more than brutal rape of a stranger.  As in Australia, most assaults occur in the family home and involve intimate partners.

The thinking thwarting reform runs on these illogical rails: Marriage authorises sex so all intimate behaviour is consensual. If the relationship turns bad, women should mask their bruises and show their smiles to maintain harmony.  If an underage girl becomes pregnant the pressure to wed is intense.

In 2019 the law was amended so both parties can marry at 19.  It used to be 16 for girls.

However the global NGO Girls, not Brides which fights to stop child marriage, reports  ‘religious courts or local officials (can) authorise marriages of girls even earlier, with no minimum age in such cases.’  

So what can reformers do to accelerate change?  Conservative Indonesians may reject their neighbour’s liberal attitudes, but they’ll be happy to accept our Liberal leader’s habit of entreating citizens to pray.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 19 Feb 2021: 

GET UP STUFFS UP

 Being Murdoched - and no restitution

        

Till now GetUp hasn’t needed disciples rah-rahing the activist group’s crusades. Endorsements come when targets mouth off.  If GetUp is getting so far up their nostrils they start to snort loudly, then the NGO’s efforts must be effective.  Or so the reasoning runs. Though not this time.

To environmental justice, human rights and other worthy issues, GetUp has added public broadcasting.  It’s trying to arouse anger against the impact of News Corp’s never-ending siege of the national broadcaster through the just-released video Murdoch & Morrison v. The ABC.

The 26-minute programme is billed as ‘an explosive new documentary revealing the conservative campaign to gut, discredit and ultimately abolish our iconic public broadcaster  ... (It) exposes the work of the Murdoch media, the Institute of Public Affairs and their allies in the Morrison Government to abolish the ABC’.

That promo should rally all who uphold John Reith’s broadcasting principles; presumably that includes GetUp’s reputed one-million members.  Not so. Three days after going on-line the YouTube page had recorded only 9,000 views.

If that audience included conservative politicians and News Corp’s directors they’d have clicked away before the credits, realising nothing to fear. There are useful backgrounds and sober observations by former ABC senior executive Michael Ward and Macquarie Uni’s Professor Ed Davis; however no damaging disclosures which might lead viewers to cancel subs to Murdoch’s mags and rags.

MM v ABC does three things wrong:  It preaches to the choir which knows the sermons by heart.  It neither exposes anything new as promised, nor examines the criticisms, and it’s poorly constructed.

GetUp trumpeted ‘no TV station is going to air it. And Scott Morrison and the Murdoch Press will do everything in their power to discredit it over the coming days.’

The more pedestrian reason for rejection is that it’s not good enough.  Maybe the discrediting is coming, though so far it seems the PM and News Corp have more important things to do.

Much space is taken stressing the ABC’s value in emergencies.  Correct, though overdone since smartphones have outsmarted transistor radios.  During the current conflagration north of Perth, the Department of Fire and Emergency Services website continually updated warnings and tracked the inferno.

A strong case for investigating alleged political influence on the ABC is the cancellation of its ABC Life website after a carpet bombing by News Corp.  

According to the site’s former deputy editor Osman Faruqi, the ‘idea was that Life’s team of digital journalists would work with already existing ABC programs to help their stories travel further.

‘The second goal was to help the ABC connect with audiences that had little affiliation with the broadcaster. ABC Life’s key performance indicators were explicit: develop a relationship with these Australians by producing content relevant to their lives, and bring them into the broader ABC fold.’

Faruqi features in MM v ABC saying he was packaged by Andrew Bolt as ‘a green Muslim leftist’ even before ABC Life was launched in 2018.  News Corp’s search engines must have flagged a non-Anglo to vilify.  Mum Mehreen is a Greens senator and on the rabid rights’ hate list. 

Faruqi said ABC Life had exceeded expectations.  His case would have been strengthened with data and supportive internal reports.  Why no questioning of management and its decision to kill?

Those hoping for a punchy doco with certainties delivered by respected thought-leaders on public broadcasting’s importance to democracy will be weeping at the lost chance.

Where are the views of scholars who’ve studied the British original, the catastrophe in NZ when the national telecaster went semi-commercial, the situation in Canada and the struggling PBS and NPR in the US?

At times MM v ABC looks more like a home movie. Six minutes are wasted with members clapping the ABC and staff frolicking as Bananas in Pyjamas.

Cute stuff, but confronting a machine as ruthless and formidable as News Corp needs loading heavy artillery with tungsten-tipped facts. 

Unaddressed questions could have included: What’s an adequate service? Should the budget be indexed?  The formula ABC good, News Corp bad is too simplistic for serious debate.  ABC defenders anxious about issues like overstocked and overpaid management worry they’ll give ammo to opponents, but need to be clear-eyed to stay authentic.

Why weren’t the ABC’s stalkers questioned about their reasoning?  Even though they can’t walk straight, ideologues need the odd plywood prop of truth and lackey band of logic to stay upright.

The PM’s Trumpism: ‘there are no further cuts (to the ABC budget) because there no cuts’ should have been forensically examined.  Last year the mainstream media reported $84 million and 250 jobs slashed.

Likewise former IPA director James Paterson’s bubble that ‘the case for privatising the ABC is getting stronger every year.’  British philosopher Bertrand Russell said it well: ‘The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.’

Bolt’s fatuous assertion that the ‘toxic’ ABC is ‘a menace to our democracy’ should have been challenged face-to-face.  Why does he dread diversity and quality? 

We’re aware he’s feeding the trolls, but if he quivers at being confronted by the likes of Paul Barry he should be lampooned.   The gap left by the late John Clarke and Bryan Dawe has still to be filled.

One sector crippled by a lack of funds and ignored is the overseas service ABC Australia.  Originally a showcase of our values, talents and culture, it’s now stuffed with AFL (not played west of WA), repeat promos and state news.  Only marginally better than a test pattern. 

Reluctantly kept on life support because transmission is compulsory under the ABC charter, it ranks below other international services.   That’s so shameful even the Dirty Digger in a New York apartment should be squirming at how his birthplace presents itself to the world.

MM v ABC was a fine ambition, poorly executed.  The job should have been given to a tough producer who knows how and where to hit heavyweights.  It’s worth watching to hear Ward, Davis and Faruqi, but otherwise sad to say this time GetUp has stuffed up.

First published in Pearls and Irritations, 8 Feb 2020:
Murdoch & Morrison v. The ABC - GetUp fails a commendable mission - Pearls and IrritationsPearls and Irritations (johnmenadue.com)