LOCKING DOWN AFTER VIRUS HAS BOLTED

 

Indonesia’s open-door lockdown      

       

 

    

Four years ago Oxfam published research showing the four richest men in Indonesia own as much wealth as the country’s poorest 100 million citizens.

The statistic is so disturbing it had to be rechecked, particularly as President Joko Widodo continually claims he’s fighting inequality.  But so far there’s been no credible challenge to the development charity’s calculations. 

Also, no show of government resolve to tackle a divide so wide reduction seems impossible without determined leadership backed by a surge of altruism from the oligarchy. Right now this looks unlikely.

The situation has worsened since the pandemic hit last year. The Central Statistics Agency’s (CSA) latest release shows almost ten million unemployed.  Uncounted are the millions of casuals and self-employed sole traders whose takings have been slashed by the plague.

"Indonesia could become the epicentre of the pandemic, but it's already the epicentre of Asia," said Dicky Budiman, an Indonesian epidemiologist at Griffith University. He’s been predicting numbers will double in the next few weeks.

"If you look at the population difference between India and Indonesia… then the pandemic is far more serious than in India."

The top end of town also reports tumbling takings.  Last year Southeast Asia’s biggest economy was thumped by its first recession since the 1998 Asian financial crisis; 2021 first-quarter data from the CSA confirms the downhill trend.

After flip-flopping on saving commerce or citizens, Widodo ordered a 17-day lockdown across Java and Bali ending on 20 July.  This may be extended to 3 August.  Implementation has been hit and miss – mostly the latter.

Sutiaji, the Mayor of Malang in East Java, told local media he won’t follow the president’s edict, though more than 300 cases were found in his city on one day last week. There are testing stations, but the fee of Rp 200,000, the equivalent of two days work for a casual labourer and three for a household maid, is a hefty deterrent, corrupting official figures.

Immunisation is patchy with clinics mainly using the Chinese Sinovac, plus some Astra Zeneca.  Reuters reports about ten per cent of the population (273 million) has had two jabs.

In the absence of any peer-reviewed academic surveys on the effectiveness of the lockdown, personal observations will have to suffice.  The snapshots come from Malang, population 900,000, the second biggest metropolis in the province.  All are first hand.

 

 

A dozen black-uniformed satpol (unarmed local government security) arrived at a packed street produce market at 6 am after it had been running for an hour, ordering around 100 vendors to gather their wares and go. 

They shouted back that if they couldn’t sell they’d starve.  The outnumbered and sympathetic satpol gave up, not even bothering to warn scores of unmasked customers to cover up as mandated or enforce social distancing.

Eateries are take-away only unless diners say they’re weary.  Then a back room can be found for sit-down meals.  One warung (permanent food stall) at the entrance to a central city gang (lane) doesn’t even bother with subterfuge.  Customers use tables in clear view of pedestrians, though not patrol cars, so no worries

Virtue signalling is rampant.  A story of a transport business helping people in isolation was dominated by photos of the company’s bus fleet and staff. Others are using the same tactic to get their logos on the news pages.

Hawkers bike around the suburbs flogging foods and household knick-knacks though other goods are on offer.  Buyers are cautious, slowing the hand-to-mouth pedlars’ cash flows to a trickle.

 

 

Sutedjo, 55, offers gemstones set in clunky rings much admired by men with big egos and little else. He pushes his last century cycle around the nooks and crannies of the ancient hilltown, accompanied by his wife Kartini, 43, and two of their three children, surviving on handouts.  “Before Covid 19 I could sell five rings a day,” he said.  “Now I’d be lucky to sell one.  Few have money.”

The family is untroubled by police who are rarely seen. Kartini said she and her husband are too frightened to be immunised and claim no one has tried to persuade them that the disease is serious and protection free.  Government advertising has generals and politicians in uniforms sagging with medals above captions urging the populace to stay indoors. Some do – most don’t.

The posters also urge people to exercise – impossible in tiny rooms in cramped houses.  The few public parks have been closed, but those determined to follow the recommendation and shake their limbs have pulled down fences.  The gaps remain.

Sellers of jamu (traditional herbal potions) are among the few street criers doing good business having expanded their cure-alls from colds to Covid.

Orders to shut mosques and churches lasted but a day before pressure from clerics forced the government to reverse its decision.

Kartini said her family hadn’t received any aid from their mosque or the government and couldn’t explain why.  Her response would puzzle individualist Australians used to a welfare system where the needy expect state support and are quick to assert their rights.

Traditional Javanese believe life is predestined, so what’s the point of trying to make a difference?   Muhammadiyah University psychology lecturers Diah Karmiyati and Sofa Amalia have written of the principle of nrima (acceptance of the existing situation).  These values make it easier for authorities to do what they like – and that includes politicians.

Jakarta trumpets that its Program Sembako (essential foods) project – which includes a cash payment of Rp 200,000 a month (AUD 18.50) - has reached about 20 million households.  Not all parcels have arrived intact. 

Late last year social affairs minister Juliari Batubara was charged by the Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (Corruption Eradication Commission) with taking bribes totalling Rp 14.5 billion (AUD 1.4 million). The KPK reported Batubara and two others took a ‘commission’ of Rp 10,000 from suppliers for each Rp 300,000 sembako pack destined for the needy.  

Along with the ineffectual lockdown the widely reported graft has fomented outrage and eroded trust in the government’s ability to handle the pandemic and keep its people safe.

 Psychologist and civil rights activist Alissa Wahid, eldest daughter of Indonesia’s fourth president Abdurrahman Wahid, aka Gus Dur, has been running an online petition urging leaders to lift their game.  Her slogan:  “Without integrity, no one listens; without trust, no one follows.”

First published in New Mandala, 21 July 2021: 
https://www.newmandala.org/indonesias-open-door-lockdown/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FAITH TRUMPS FACTS

 

                        Fear God, not the pandemic

 

 

July 20 will be a big day in Indonesia.  It marks the end of more than two weeks of lockdown, and it’s Bloody Tuesday - Idul Adha, the feast of the sacrifice. This year participants may become victims.

 

The Old Testament story has Ibrahim (Abraham) ready to knife his son Ismail (Isaac) to obey a celestial command. Filicide was avoided when the lad was substituted with a lamb. Putting faith first is cruelling Jakarta’s bid to get citizens to recognise the pandemic is real.

Just after dawn on 20 July, the yards of Indonesia’s mosques and adjacent streets will run red.  Thousands of conscious billy goats, rams and young bulls will have their throats slit, dying slowly while the slaughtermen pray aloud.

The butchers should also be imploring the deity to keep the people safe.  Crowds will gather to watch the gory scene and collect their meat. Many will be taking home sickness, maybe even death.

Psychologist and civil rights activist Alissa Wahid fears the religious event will be another Covid-19 super spreader unless the national government moves to cancel or control.  This is unlikely as the Joko Widodo administration dreads a backlash from religious leaders. 

The eldest daughter of fourth president Abdurrahman Wahid, aka Gus Dur, (right) told an Australian National University Indonesia Project webinar this month that leadership in controlling the pandemic was absent at national and regional levels:

 

‘There’s been a lack of preparedness in crisis management and an inability to face brutal facts. We could have done much better.  Is this a failure of government?  Yes.’

Wahid claimed ultra-conservative preachers – Muslim and Christian - are telling congregations through videos that the government, military, police and scientists are communists challenging the will of the deity, so messages urging vaccination must be disobeyed. 

‘They are saying there’s nothing we can do, the government is doomed, Indonesia is doomed because mosques are closing down (to reduce the spread of infection). Putting religion first goes to so many aspects of everyday life.

‘The country is down on its knees.  Numbers are bleak, hospitals are collapsing. Many sick people are not reporting to clinics. We are in an era of distrust.’

Wahid’s comments need to be put in context. Javanese are reluctant to confront, preferring harmony – an essential quality where millions are squashed in densely-populated kampongs.

The brutality of Australian politics is absent in serious discussion of state affairs by reputable figures.  Much criticism is muted by ‘however’ and other adverbs to soften blows and appease the target. 

Wahid’s Islamic credentials help shield her from all but the most acidic attacks.  She’s General Secretary of Nahdlatul Ulama’s Family Welfare Agency promoting strong and moderate families. NU is Indonesia’s biggest Muslim organisation with more than 50 million members

 

She’s also the National Coordinator of the Gusdurian network across 140 cities promoting interfaith dialogue and democracy, the issues which drove her late father.  Being blunt carries risks.  Chauvinists lurk, ready to rip reputations and besmirch motives.

A few others are getting braver as the virus bites deep and frustration mounts.  The self-styled Consortium for Public Health has publicly criticised Widodo’s apparent refusal to take full responsibility for mishandling the pandemic.

One line in the 24 civil society group’s open letter would resonate in Australia: ‘Forget, for once, about political image, focus on handling the pandemic.’

The Jakarta Post’s editor-at-large Ary Hermawan – formerly with Amnesty International -  wrote: ‘… we can no longer ignore how the ongoing health crisis has exposed the structural problems underpinning our democracy, how the state has failed us in one of the most challenging times in history.

‘Corruption and rent-seeking remain rampant during the pandemic … the democratic institutions we set up in the Reform Era (after the fall of President Soeharto in 1998) have been co-opted by a small group of people who are only interested in accumulating wealth and power.

‘The bad news is that there is no quick fix for this. But if the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that a structural transformation of our body politic is far past due.’

Although growing attacks on the Widodo administration’s incompetence are heartfelt they’re unlikely to see regime change.  It’s different next door where the United Malays National Organisation, the nation’s largest political party, has withdrawn support for PM Muhyiddin Yassin over his handling of the pandemic. 

Indonesia doesn’t follow the Westminster system of government and shadow ministers.  There’s no structured opposition or credible stand-by ready to walk on stage should the government fail.

Vice president Ma’ruf Amin, 78, is seldom seen. Student unions have dubbed him ‘King of Silence’ and his boss ‘King of Lip Service’.  The former NU cleric was chosen as Widodo’s running mate to capture the Islamic vote.

Daily cases of Covid 19 were around 5,000 a month ago. That figure has now multiplied eightfold. Some days more than a thousand deaths are reported. Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Research Centre reports about 2.5 million cases and more than 65,000 deaths since the virus arrived in the archipelago last year.

Yet denial continues. According to Wahid, leaders in some towns are reporting their communities are Covid-free to avoid the shame of disclosing incompetent management.  On one day Gusdurians reported a total of 832 deaths gleaned from medical sources, but the Jakarta government claimed the toll was 549.

The media has also been a scapegoat for reporting bad news of the plague, with police asserting verified stories published by responsible newspapers have been hoaxes.

Economist Dr Rimawan Pradiptyo from Yogyakarta’s Gadjah Mada University told the ANU webinar local organisations were trying to fill the holes caused by government maladministration, including overlaps and departmental silo mentality.

SONJO (Sambatan - voluntary community work, and Jogja aka Yogyakarta), started in the Central Java city in March last year. It now has 23 self-help groups and 1,800 members.  They rely on donations, eschewing government funds and advertising, using the networks of the wildly popular WhatsApp messaging system to spread accurate information.

SONJO members support the vulnerable and those at risk of infection, linking the willing with the needy, helping the poor cope with authorities and source necessities, like coffins and oxygen. It has 60 shelters for patients needing to isolate. To the outsider, these look like regular tasks for public servants.

Pradiptyo: ‘Unfortunately we have limits. We have no authority. What we need to do now is let the government do the business.’

Wahid: ‘We are getting to the edge of the capacity of volunteers and the community movement.  We cannot take over the roles of government but we can try to help in limited ways. If Idul Adha goes ahead we should brace ourselves for an August impact.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 13 July 2021: https://johnmenadue.com/fear-god-not-the-pandemic-in-indonesia/

 

 

 

 

 

KOREA'S DANCING DIPLOMATS

 

                        Pop goes Korea, plop goes Australia  

 

 

From afar it looked like a demo, though the location was wrong.  An Indonesian McDonald’s restaurant, not the town hall or government office where placard-wavers usually gather.  And much of the tight-packed crowd spilling into the street wore the green gear of GoJek motorcycle carriers. Maybe a pay dispute?

Wrong on all counts. The bikers were collecting online orders of chicken nuggets packed in boxes promoting the K-pop boy band BTS.  The tsunami of customers was so pressing the police forced 32 stores to close.

The McDonald’s event was weird but Indonesian infatuation with all things Korean isn’t new.  In 2019, a Korean government portal claimed Indonesia ‘topped the global ranking of K-pop content viewership on YouTube with 2.62 billion views.’

 

The genre is addictive, the choreography simple, production values faultless, the pimple-free performers more like sci-fi androids.  Most songs are in senseless English, the lyrics probably written by AI. Sample: ‘Word up, talk the talk, just move like we off the wall.’ The sound is the swish of swiped credit cards.

Marketing agency head Michael Patent told The Jakarta Post K-pop appealed to youngsters seeking escapism and a sense of belonging to an international community:

 ‘K-pop is an art, but it’s also business. The management companies have created a system in which a product that gets delivered to consumers is of really high quality. It’s been produced to specifically appeal to a certain taste.’  In brief, creating a need and coining tons of won.

 

The ROK makes earth movers, smartphones and cars.  Also in its catalogue are K-pop soft sells, music, videos, pictures, make-up, food, fashion and more.

 

Australia feeds Indonesia grains and meats.  Its add-ons tend to be cerebral, scholarships, elite exhibitions and on-campus film festivals.  Worthy stuff, though no match for sashaying beardless boys and cutesy girl groups sending the fandom frothing.

 

Indonesia’s mean age is 29.7 – Australia’s 38. The UN Population Fund puts 28 per cent of Indonesian citizens in the 10-24 age bracket.  Suits spread-sheeting tariffs may not be the best way to snare Gen Z’s attention.

The last time Australian popular culture elated Indonesians was in the late 1980s with the TV series Return to Eden.  In 1992 the show’s star Rebecca Gilling was mobbed when she visited Jakarta, with the Australian Financial Review reporting the then 40-year old actress ‘may for a time have been more popular in Indonesia than she was in Australia.’

Bemused Australian Embassy staff in Jakarta might ponder this simple question:  How come South Korea’s youth excites Indonesians who only know of the East Asian nation on smartphone screens - while the folks next door rarely raise a yawn? 

Maybe it’s all too tough.  In Strangers Next Door?  Melbourne University’s Tim Lindsey and David McRae write bluntly: ‘There are no two neighbouring countries anywhere in the world that are more different than Indonesia and Australia. They differ hugely in religion, language, culture, history, geography, race, economics, worldview and population.

‘In fact, Indonesia and Australia have almost nothing in common other than the accident of geographic proximity.’

That disheartening list isn’t contested, with the mismatches aggravated by distance.  The peninsula nation’s heritage and values bear little resemblance to the islands where 350 years of Dutch colonialism implanted many aspects of Western thinking.

 

So why the lack of love?  We Australians tell ourselves we’re matey but rarely relate beyond backslaps with foreigners who don’t drink beer or play cricket. As long as the bulk containers keep sailing with full holds it seems they’re not going to tackle the tough stuff.

In 2017 the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade started reviewing policies on soft power, defined ‘as the ability to influence the behaviour or thinking of others through the power of attraction and ideas.’

After 130 concerned individuals and organisations had lodged submissions the show was ditched. DFAT blamed the pandemic making the project ‘no longer as relevant to the significantly changed global environment.’  The Koreans think otherwise, churning out their products and currently running a TV sport drama series Racket Boys with an Indonesian storyline.

As reported in Australian Outlook in May, a survey by Singapore’s ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute showed an awkward reality: Indonesians think Australia has little influence and its aid is too tiny to be felt. 

Now we have the other side’s feelings.  Last month the Lowy Institute released its annual poll on Australian attitudes to those across the Arafura Sea.  Yet again it showed what the director of LI’s Southeast Asia Program Ben Bland called in The Interpreter website “a dispiriting exercise”.

 

 ‘Whether asked about their warmth toward Indonesia, confidence in its leaders, or even their level of basic knowledge about their biggest neighbour, Australians tend to show a combination of disinterest and distrust.’

Reasons include the gutting of Indonesian language courses in schools and unis and the shallow media coverage of archipelagic affairs. 

President Joko Widodo focuses on domestic matters.  His more worldly predecessor Dr Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, told the Australian parliament in 2010 the issues were improving mutual public understanding, managing diplomatic differences, boosting economic ties and adapting to emerging regional problems.

 

 

Commented Bland, who is also Widodo’s biographer: ‘More than a decade later, both countries have made steady progress on the last three challenges. However (the Lowy poll) shows that there is still much work to do on the first.’

 

In 1994 the then PM Paul Keating said: ‘No country is more important to Australia than Indonesia - If we fail to get this relationship right, and nurture and develop it, the whole web of our foreign relations is incomplete.’

In the 27 years since every Australian leader has said much the same, often with the enthusiasm of making a dental appointment.  None have asked Aussie kids how to connect with their maybe-friends next door.

As all parents eventually and gladly discover, adolescence doesn’t last. The brightest of Jakarta’s K-poppers are set to remain movers and shakers when they graduate from dance floor to boardroom.  Canberra wants them tapping policies to the rhythm of Oz, but the beat is set by Seoul.

Buttoned-down diplomats face a new reality: Gyrating teens flaunting flesh can also be a tool of statecraft.

 

First published in Australian Outlook, 9 July 2021:  https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/pop-goes-korea-plop-goes-australia/

LOCKDOWN LITE

               Lockdown’s compulsory – if you like

 

 

Luhut Binsar Panjaitan doesn’t read Pearls & Irritations.  That’s obvious because the former general and Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s Mr Fixit alleged he was blindsided by the latest tsunami of Covid 19.

This column claims no exclusive insights by earlier predicting the plague would surge after Mudik (exodus).  Millions defied instructions to stay put, instead heading to hometowns to mark the Idul Fitri end of the Ramadan fasting month. University of Indonesia epidemiologist Dr Pandu Rionos described this behaviour as ‘herd stupidity’. 

Every credible publication was quoting named experts repeating the same warning.  Common sense also shouted a clear message: Unconstrained crowds transmit infections.

 Panjaitan’s claim for unknowing was rapidly dismissed. Griffith University doctoral candidate Dicky Budiman has 22 years experience with Indonesia’s Health Department and UN agencies. He told the nation’s premier broadsheet Kompas he’d repeatedly forewarned through mainstream and social media of an upcoming surge.

‘Right from the start, I said that 2021 could be far worse than 2020 even though there was a vaccine.  The government's strategic response to the pandemic failed to address fundamental issues such as early detection, testing and tracing, isolation and quarantine.  Who was supplying information to him (Panjaitan)?’

On one day last week, almost 22,000 new cases and 467 deaths were recorded. The tally of tragedy so far is around 2.2 million positives and more than 58,000 deaths, the highest toll in Asia.  (China, with a population five times larger, has reported 91,847 cases and 4,636 fatalities.)

Indonesia’s numbers are considered conservative.  Ordinary Indonesian fear seeing doctors lest they’re told to take a test they can’t afford. Reuters reports Indonesia has jabbed more than 45 million arms. As all need two shots, 8.4 per cent of the country’s population has been vaccinated.  The target now is two million a day.

Throughout 2020 and half of this year, Widodo resisted medical experts’ advice to lockdown the population of 273 million so hospitals can handle admissions and doctors get a grip on treating those at most risk.

The president’s consistent line has been the need to prioritise care for the poor by keeping the economy open.  His reasoning has been the opposite of Australia’s –the economy must be closed to protect all. But workers and businesses Down Under have been underpinned by Job Seeker and Job Keeper while Indonesia offers limited welfare. Funds for the poor have allegedly been stolen by a minister and bureaucrats.

Widodo’s desultory approach has been Pemberlakuan Pembatasan Kegiatan Masyarakat, 

(Restrictions on Community Activities).  These have been left to regions to enforce and widely ignored. 

 As in Australia communication of government decisions has been chaotic. 

 The PPKM has had no measurable effect on the spread of the pandemic.

The scientists’ push has been relentless and eventually successful. Widodo has now agreed to shut down Java and Bali for the first half of July. But getting the law obeyed is another matter in a society that treats the road code as a set of suggestions rather than rules to be obeyed.

Panjaitan is no dunce. Apart from being Indonesia’s version of Canberra’s vaccination task force supremo Lieutenant General John Frewen, the US-educated former Special Forces soldier is one of four Coordinating Ministers and regarded as a sane voice in Cabinet.  So why play the startled hare?

To shield his boss from the shame of showing weakness by wavering. In Javanese culture, power is not just a political win but a mystical gift that only favours the resolute.  As a Protestant from Sumatra, Panjaitan can play the fall guy.

What happens now to the wee workers Widodo said he was trying to protect? The International Labour Organisation estimates the nation’s small and medium enterprises contribute 27 per cent to the GDP; they also keep millions of families alive.

Like others, Malang micro-trader Sapatun said she’ll be ignoring Widodo’s order and continue selling bananas from her two-wheel pushcart. She makes between Rp 30,000 to Rp 50,000 (AUD 3 – 5) a day, depending on whether others have been poaching on her round.  After expenses, she usually scores  a dollar-fifty a day profit.

Sapatun doesn’t use Indonesian, so the widow who thinks she may be in her late 60s relies on Javanese-speaking customers to explain the news from Jakarta.  Their source is Facebook gossip spiced with tales of hospitals killing patients. The reality reinforces the myths with stories of 60 dying in Yogyakarta because oxygen supplies failed, and tents in car parks used as ICU wards.

‘I have enough rice to last for about a week, but no vegetables or chicken,’ Saputan said.  ‘If I can’t work I’ll have to go without. Where will I get money to eat?’

It would be warming to think Widodo’s reluctance to lockdown comes from being raised in a riverside shack in the Central Java city of Solo. The story goes that his everyman background helps him relate to the plight of people like Saputan and the close to 30 million earning below AUD 30 a month.  That’s the Asian Development Bank’s poverty line.

The lockdown officially started on 3 July.  At daybreak, residents peered nervously around to check for enforcers – army, police or local volunteers?  Not a uniform in sight except at a closed top-end boulevard. 

There are NO ENTRY signs on public parks and restaurants, but street eateries keep busy with sit-down customers. The markets remain as crowded as always. Mask wearing has been mandated, which is being interpreted as optional.  Shops stay open. No rush on toilet rolls as Indonesians wash, not wipe.

Otherwise, the central East Java city of Malang with close to a million residents went about its business as usual. Reports suggest it’s much the same across the archipelago, though Jakarta hospitals are said to be in crisis. 

Sapatun and her fellow mini traders have little to fear breaking the rules.  However Widodo and Panjaitan will have much to worry about if their desultory containment plans don’t work, the health systems turn turtle and the populace turns riotous.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 7 July 2021:  https://johnmenadue.com/lockdowns-compulsory-in-indonesia-if-you-like/