TOGETHER, FROM EVERYWHERE

COPING WITH A GO-ALONG TO GET-ALONG SOCIETY          

Joe Kirk doesn’t use the words “foreigner” or “bule”’ the slang term in Java for Caucasians. Some consider it racist because centuries ago it meant an albino buffalo.

“I prefer ‘international citizen’ - that covers everyone,” the East Java Friends founder said in his Malang home where he runs the network of  330 people from 22 separate nations.

The top three nationalities are the US, Australia and the Netherlands. Some are retirees, others work for international companies.  Many are married to Indonesians.

Newcomers raise their needs, queries and concerns. Top of the list isn’t security or health  but traffic and space, or rather its absence. This bothers people raised in the Australian outback or American prairies.

“I tell them straight - this is how things are.” said Kirk. “The locals aren’t going to change so you need to adjust. OK, the road rules are different  and not always followed as in the West. Don’t complain, adapt and enjoy.

‘We’re outsiders, privileged to be in this extraordinary country. There’s so much to see and learn, including the language and lifestyle. If that’s not what you want, head home.”

Apart from the city’s famous boulevard Jalan Ijen and the central street Jalan Basuki Rachmat, 78 years ago the citizens of the second biggest metropolis in East Java inherited some splendid buildings, particularly churches and government offices.

But these standouts are surrounded by a spaghetti of narrow alleys left by the departing Dutch colonialists.

They weren’t  bad planners but constrained by the deep gullies and twisting tributaries of the Brantas River and the encircling hills and mountains.

It’s these geographical features that make the cool hilltown 444 metres above sea level the place where Kirk loves to live and expects to die - though that’s not planned for anytime soon as there’s too much to do - and it’s all his own making. He reckons being busy is a virtue.

When he spoke to Indonesia Expat the one-time soldier, accountant, company manager and businessman was preparing for the EJF’s annual carnival, the first since Covid restrictions were lifted.

The idea is to “meet your community neighbours” by sharing food and games played on the grounds of an international school.

Together with his Indonesian wife Ratih,  Kirk was gathering flags and posters and assembling a schedule of events to keep the show moving and ensure much intermingling.  

This takes some organising, a skill Kirk has in abundance largely because of his rich background.

He grew up on a cotton farm in Mississippi and put himself through a four-year university course by working four jobs.  He eventually joined the army..

Out of uniform, he scored a job with an international tobacco company. He doesn’t smoke but learned how to test for taste and quality.  He did so well that the directors sent him to Jakarta, a city he’d never heard about.

 He arrived in mid-May 1998, glanced out of a Jakarta high-rise at the streets below, saw the demonstrators  as second President Soeharto quit office, and told his colleagues to leave - and quickly.

Hearing of the disorder from the safety of the US should have been enough to convince Kirk there were better places to employ his talents.  But his company wanted him to manage a run-down tobacco factory in Malang.

He took the job on his terms, expanded output and turning the business into profit. He did this not by buying costly new machines from overseas which would have displaced operators and distressed many, but by responding to the needs of the 600 staff.

That included an early-opening canteen to encourage on-time starts, hygienic toilets and worker-friendly schedules, approaches he’d garnered over the years from being a hands-on manager and student of human behaviour.

At that time a German couple was publishing a quarterly newsletter in English. When they returned to Europe Kirk took over, dumped the magazine and expanded the organisation. He found small groups of expats “living in bubbles of work or religion, not mixing.

“I didn’t like that. We need to mix with the locals, support each other in adjusting to Indonesian laws and culture and solving everyday problems. Some involve dealing with government agencies, like Immigration where the staff have always been very helpful.

“This is a go-along to get-along society. People are tolerant and accepting and usually interested in who we are. But we must always be respectful.

“We meet weekly for lunch and have monthly family gatherings and special occasions. I put out a news bulletin every afternoon and forward security alerts from the US consulate-general in Surabaya.

“We’ve assembled a directory of recommended services, like clinics and repair shops. Members share their experiences and offer advice.

“Whenever I see an international citizen I don’t know, in the street or shopping malls, I invite them to join EJF - there’s no fee. We have to encounter newcomers, and make them welcome.

“Whatever their background I want people to feel they are part of Malang and be happy here.”

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 First published in Indonesia Expat, 4 July 2024: https://online.fliphtml5.com/qinqh/ewir/#p=14

FAREWELL OWEN - AND AN AGE OF AID

STOP TELLING, START LISTENING:  Owen's Guide for Do-Gooders

The 1998 Jakarta riots, the fall of President Soeharto and his 32-year-old authoritarian Orde Baru (New Order)  rule and krismon (the Asian financial crisis) were social and political earthquakes.

Emerging from the rubble the idealists wanted changes;  according to the Australian-educated economist Boediono who later became vice president (2009 - 2014) they  sought “economic recovery,  improved governance, supremacy of law, and  democracy.”

Pushing the swing hard was an Australian - little known in his homeland but a central figure in Jakarta.

Owen Podger, good governance advocate, corruption fighter and democracy defender wasn’t always a chart-topper with the Indonesian elite he worked with for more than 30 years.

This had nothing to do with his professional skills, overseas education or personal traits.  He was a modest, personable Ozzie administrator married to an Indonesian and fluent in the language.

But here's the hassle: Owen wouldn't tell his employers what they wanted to hear unless it was the truth. So his reports often revealed discomforting facts suggesting painful solutions.  When bureaucrats dig in to defend against advancing change, admiration for a stirrer is hard to hear.

Owen, 80,  died in his sleep on the remote island of Sumba on 6 June. Last year he posted this academic paper in his continuous campaign to get the outside ‘experts’ to ask the locals and glean their wisdom.

Owen trained as an architect at NSW University in the 1960s, later shifting  to town planning and then to public administration:

In 2012 he organised a seminar in Jakarta led by Boediono for bureaucrats advising ministers' advisors, implementing good government policies without getting snared by politics and corruption.

Copies of The Role of Departmental Secretaries, (ANU E-Press)   were distributed to all new civil servants trying to shake off the old bad practices.

The author was Owen's younger brother Andrew, a former federal Public Service Commissioner and an ANU Professor.

He recalled that Owen's love of Indonesia began in the early 1970s when he travelled through the country after completing a master's degree at UCLA.

“He spent many of the decades since  living in Indonesia involved firstly in advising on urban planning and then, in light of first-hand experience with corruption and poor management, in bureaucratic reform.”

Owen wrote: “I  changed my career from just urban development to governance reform: particularly policies to improve performance of democratic, decentralized and accountable government, with emphasis new mindsets to respond to and anticipate disasters.”

Owen stressed the need to decentralise power and get the regions to recover their responsibilities and take on local government.

That happened, though piecemeal.  Some provinces are now stronger and more innovative.  Last century controls killed initiatives; it sometimes seemed regional bureaucrats had to entrain to Jakarta for permission to empty ashtrays.  

In 2004 Owen was the first international adviser to the new Regional Representative Council (Dewan Perwakilan Daerah Republik Indonesia) DPR.With University of  Indonesia lawyers he helped draft laws on regional government and villages.

Overseas advisors are now becoming rare in Indonesia.  During the early years of Soeharto's 32 years in power, the so-called 'Berkeley Mafia' of economists from the University of California had a major influence.

This waned as they were replaced by new generations of local-born experts often educated overseas. The role of outsiders now tends to be confined to specific tasks with aid agencies directed by Indonesians.

When the earthquake and tsunami hit Aceh in 2004 the the disaster was too big for the nation to handle alone, so needed international help.

 Said Andrew: “ Owen worked with the local governments there not only to help them address the immediate response but also to develop longer-term sustainable redevelopment plans

“He was disappointed that the central government, and international aid agencies including AusAID, failed to listen to the local communities and tended to impose external ‘solutions’.

“ This experience added to his long-held view that much democratic and bureaucratic reform needs to be based on local communities.

‘While continually disappointed by the slow progress of reform in Indonesia and the failure to successfully combat corruption, Owen remained positive about Indonesia’s future.”

The Republic has been running its international aid agency since 2019. In nine months last year, it disbursed Rp 140.45 billion (AUD 13.5 million) in grants for 28 global humanitarian aid activities, including for Palestine.

In many ways, Owen's passing marks a shift in the culture of international aid programmes and the role of outsiders. But even in his early days as an advisor, his work shows he was always backing local wisdom against imported solutions.

He was buried alongside his late wife Helena in a tomb at the front of the family’s Sumba house - a tradition in the Eastern Indonesia archipelago that’s largely Christian.

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  First published in Inside Indonesia 4 July 2024: 

https://www.insideindonesia.org/archive/articles/obituary-stop-telling-start-listening

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LOOKS LIKE PYONGYANG? NO, IT'S JAKARTA

CONTROL THE PAST -THEN THE FUTURE. THUS SPOKE ORWELL            

It’s been argued that Indonesia’s next President may be good for Australian interests; for domestic progressives that’s doubtful.

It’s not just computer apps that get updated. Indonesian President Joko ’Jokowi’ Widodo is fiddling with the future by rewriting history and binning the past.  It’s a task made easier by voter ignorance.

The remake started when Jokowi made Prabowo Subianto - his main rival in the 2014 and 2019 elections - Minister of Defence.  That gave the loser a public platform as part of the government.

Some saw this as a political masterstroke based on the writings of Chinese General Sun Tzu  (probably 544–496 BC) of keeping friends close but enemies closer.

The move pruned Prabowo as the only real thorn, for by then Jokowi had recruited small parties into his coalition.

Prabowo’s promotion also gave the notoriously inflammable wannabe poli something to do.  He could now openly talk guns and bombs with men in uniform as he did before he was cashiered.

That was amid the 1998 revolution which saw the authoritarian Soeharto - also a former general - quit the presidency after 32 years of despotic rule.

The revival of democracy wasn't a good year for Prabowo. He was stripped of his ribbons for alleged insubordination after Soeharto's replacement Vice President Bacharuddin Jusuf (BJ) Habibie took control.

Prabowo then fled to exile in Jordan following his divorce from Soeharto's daughter Siti. He returned in 2008 after his former father-in-law died and tried to get into politics failing at every attempt to join an established party.

So he started his own and called it Gerindra (Great Indonesia Movement). It now has 86 seats in the House of Representatives where it’s the third largest party and its leader president-elect.

 It’s labelled right-wing by the Western media but that’s too facile. It’s certainly bombastically nationalistic and carries a whiff of  fascism.

In this year's February election, Prabowo won convincingly against two opponents with 55 per cent of the popular vote.  (The Constitution prevented Jokowi from standing again for a third term.)

Now Prabowo’s backers are erasing mentions of his alleged human rights abuses that saw him refused entry to the US and Australia earlier this century.

The bans have been quietly lifted. Other subtle changes are underway, particularly descriptors of  Prabowo as ‘general, retired’, even used by the supposedly neutral academic journal The Conversation.

Wikipedia now calls him a 'retired honorary army general.' In the partisan Indonesian media this title has become commonplace with no mention of past villainies, like the seizure of 13 student protesters by his commandos and never seen again.

Since 2007 their parents have protested silently every Thursday before the State Palace in Jakarta demanding to know what happened to their sons.  Jokowi once promised an inquiry.  That hasn’t happened.

Prabowo responds that he’s never been charged, which is true, and that it’s time to focus on the future. That’s the standard line for all who want no probe into their past.

Now Jokowi has gone further, reinstating his successor as a four-star honorary general. When kicked out of the army in 1998 he had three stars.

NGOs have taken legal action to rescind the award but neither Prabowo nor Jokowi fronted the court.

Next came the police with their highest honour, Bintang Bhayangkara Utama (star of meritorious service ) “awarded to individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to advancing the Indonesian National Police, going beyond their duties.”  

Curious praise: A 2022 survey showed the police ranked as the least trusted of all law enforcement bodies. Last century the army ran the police.  Separation has been incomplete; soldiers can often be seen with cops acting as security at sporting events.  

How can all this happen in a society with easy Internet access to Prabowo's bio?   It's a question also being asked in the US of Trump, where Republican diehards ignore his lies and failings to win power.

It's not that bad yet in Indonesia.  One theory about support for Prabowo blames 32 years of bibliophobia when Soeharto ruled;  rote learning at schools and widespread censorship led electors away from critical thinking and into blandly accepting party propaganda.  

As Orwell wrote: “Who controls the past controls the future.”

Completing 12 years of education for 50 million students is supposed to be mandatory,  six at primary and three years each at middle and high school.

Public schooling is allegedly free for the first two stages but uniforms and subtle add-ons make education expensive. Many kids drop out in the mid-teens to work or help their parents.

A 2018 report by the Lowy Institute claimed the system had been a "high-volume, low-quality enterprise that has fallen well short of the country's ambitions for an internationally competitive system".

It blamed not enough money and poor management but "most fundamentally a matter of politics and power."

There’s little evidence the situation has improved, though the public may be ahead of their leaders. A Kompas newspaper survey claimed more than 88 per cent of respondents agreed that "political education was crucial to be pursued as a section strengthening democracy.”

By the time Prabowo,73, is inaugurated on 20 October the world's third-largest democracy will welcome its eighth president.  By then the embarrassing version will have been erased.

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  First published in Pearls & Irritations, 29 June 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/control-the-past-then-the-future-thus-spoke-orwell/

 WHAT YE SOW YE REAP

There’s nothing profound about the Biblical quote; variations are embedded in many religions and cultures.  

So it needs no prophet, seer or conman to make this prediction:  After a war like the current one in Gaza has cooled, the survivors will be bent on revenge.

The ancient tragedy is underway just next door in Papua, bleeding now and  for years to come as the hate goes on.

Canberra expresses its horror at the Middle East conflict 14,000 km distant and calls for peace, but looks away from what’s happening in the neighbourhood just 250 km to the  north.

Last year the late NZ journalist John McBeth reported that Papua independence leader Egianus Kogoya’s  determination to fight for freedom started after his father, Daniel Yudas Kagoya (correct) was killed by Indonesian troops.

Many in his group of armed partisans have become guerrillas for the same reasons.

They're now old enough to confront those they blame for the slaughter of their parents, relatives and friends and the destruction of their homes and livelihoods; so they've started killing and are getting killed.

The ore-rich province with the world’s fifth largest gold mine reserves has been a simmering low-level civil war zone since Jakarta took over the western part of New Guinea from the Dutch colonialists.  That was in 1969 following a staged ‘referendum’ using 1,025 hand-picked voters who unanimously supported integration.

One estimate has half a million indigenous Papuans dying in the past half-century through starvation and resisting Indonesian control.

No one knows if the figure is correct as journalists are banned.  Thousands of soldiers from across the archipelago are in Papua. How many is not publicised though last year it was reported that 'an additional 2,355 military members' had been deployed.

The conflict shows no signs of lessening.  In 2014 when President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo took office he told the Australian media he intended to give  Papua “special attention”.

It was benignly assumed that this meant peace talks because Jokowi was not a gung-ho militarist but a civilian, his wife Iriana had been named after the island’s old title and his visits were regular and friendly.

However his “special attention” was infrastructure, not independence: Roads, health services and education - all necessary, but secondary to the self-rule the rebels demanded.  Pacifying the insurgents and listening to their emotional concerns wasn’t on the agenda.

In 2022 Jokowi  started carving up the territory confusing locals and outsiders by amplifying bureaucracy and control. The four new provinces are Papua Selatan (South Papua), Papua Tengah (Central Papua), Papua Pegunungan (Mountain Papua) and Papua Barat Daya (South-West Papua).

For this story, we'll use ‘Papua’ to cover all.  The population of 4.4 million is largely Melanesian and Christian. However transmigration programmes bringing in poor farmers from Java who are mainly Muslim, has been diluting the indigenous population for decades.

Jokowi's predecessor, former general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he’d  “take quick and appropriate steps to deal with Papua” after violent clashes.  His ‘solution’ was force.  More died but little changed.

At the time the SMH reported that “(SBY’s) money and good intentions were squandered by corruption, cronyism and bureaucratic dysfunction.”

After a decade in office, Jokowi's legacy is  "a better armed, better resourced, more coordinated pro-independence insurgency,"  according to a Jakarta research group the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict. 

“(There are) higher civilian casualties; and the failure after a year to secure the release of a New Zealand pilot held hostage by the guerrillas.”

 (Phillip Mehrtens, then 37,  was seized on 7 February last year and his Cessna used for ferrying construction workers and  owned by an Indonesian company was torched. It’s believed he’s still alive.)

The IPAC report said Jakarta’s approaches can be characterized as: “Get them to like us”, “Hit them without mercy”, “Divide and rule”, “Give them money”, “End their isolation” and very occasionally, “Talk to them”. 

It recommends that "(Jokowi's) successor needs to radically change course."  But that's Prabowo Subianto a general who served in Papua before being cashiered for insubordination in 1998 and fleeing to exile in Jordan.

In his new leadership role he's offered to send a peacekeeping force to Gaza if there’s a ceasefire.  

The idea is saturated in irony: Indonesia has no relationship with Israel. All remnants of Jewish life during the Dutch era - including cemeteries - have been trashed. Most troops are Muslims, and Prabowo has allegedly committed human rights abuses on the island last century.

Veteran Australian journalist Hamish McDonald, author of Demokrasi: Indonesia in the 21st Century has written that in 1984 Prabowo "led troops from Kopassus, the army's Special Forces Command, across the border into Papua New Guinea to search for fighters from the Free Papua Movement Organisasi Papua Merdeka - OPM.

"In 1996, he led a Kopassus operation to free World Wildlife Fund hostages taken by the OPM. The mission was controversial because soldiers travelled via a white helicopter previously used by Red Cross negotiators"

Indonesia is still far from winning the hearts and minds of its Papuan citizens or erasing its image as a ruthless neo-colonial power.  It’s treating the OPM much as the Dutch handled the Javanese partisans during three centuries of European rule - split, discredit, threaten, arrest, kill.

That didn’t work and Indonesia is now an independent republic, largely because the Western world - including Australia, turned against the colonials and demanded change.  Weapons and money were denied to a Netherlands weakened by World War II.

That's unlikely to happen in Papua in the lifetimes of our readers.  The mines are too rich and involve influential international players. Indonesia is the world's fourth-largest nation with more Muslims than any other country.

Australia speaks strongly about human rights but does little; there’s a deep reluctance to advocate a break in the circle of violence in Papua and infuriate Jakarta.

Much like the situation with Jerusalem and the Gaza war.

##.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 21 June 2024:   https://johnmenadue.com/what-ye-sow-ye-reap/

 

 

 

 

 

FIVE RULES FOR ONLINE NEWSLETTER EDITORS

  ETHICS FOR NEWSLETTER EDITORS 

 

RESPOND: If  you invite submissions; acknowledge receipt and say when you’ll reply.

DISCIPLINE: Stick to the response date.

READ right to the end- that might make some questions unnecessary.

BE HONEST: Don’t tell  authors you’re overwhelmed with copy so can’t fit in theirs. If  true, stop inviting submissions.

DON’T WHINGE:   Freelancers have difficulties aplenty getting placed and paid - they don’t want to hear the problems of salaried staffers.

 

ONCE UPON A TIME ... GLORY OR GORY?

 THE PAST IN INDONESIA IS NOT ANOTHER COUNTRY

As  it is with all legends, the more distant the memory, the greater the reverence and the sketchier the details.

This pithy observation comes towards the close of Herald van der Linde’s new history Majapahit, the story of East Java’s golden century and its international clout. (Monsoon Books).

The alert should have been at the start, a warning to politicians everywhere prone to anointing themselves in the imagined successes of yesteryear to stay in office, forgetting their messy failures and hoping voters do the same.

The Majapahit era, named after the bitter maja (stone apple) fruit, thrived under Emperor Hayam Wuruk (1350-1389), a relatively civilised leader.

During his time the epic story/poems the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and the wayang kulit puppets defined Javanese culture and still do.

The Hindu-Buddhist empire circled the Brantas River trade route, no longer navigable and now dubbed Kali Plastik.  Its fertile floodplains are still largely hand-cultivated.

Majapahit rule probably stretched from what's now Malaysia through the archipelago to the southern Philippines and even Thailand.

Does studying the past cloud or clarify the present?  It depends on whether the learner has access to all and not just an authority's sanitised version.

Indonesia is already planning its 2045 celebrations of a centenary of independence so there's time to honestly ponder where the Republic is heading and where it has come from.

 Here  Majapahit could be a splendid guide.  Unfortunately, thoughtful analysis is often swept aside by economic stats that are so much easier to grasp.

Current president Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo forecasts a population of 309 million enjoying a per capita income of AUD 44,000 in the world's fourth largest economy within the next 21 years.

If there are any progressives around by then they'll be urging historians to address the difficult along with the triumphs to ensure balance.

 van der Linde's collected yarns of conquest and success long ago are the difficult-to-disprove stories governments prefer. Recent histories, such as accounts of the genocide of the mid-1960s  still arouse great emotion.

An estimated half-million real or imagined Communists were slaughtered; the dirty deals that felled founding president Soekarno and raised General Soeharto as his successor are not well known.

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there," wrote British novelist Leslie Poles Hartley. Maybe for Westerners, not for Indonesians. Here the past is ever present.

The story of the mainly 15th-century Majapahit rule only needs individual, date and city name changes to be an account of politics today.

Fortunately backstabbing is now a metaphor so the Kris (the traditional wavy-blade Javanese dagger often used for murders and considered magical) isn’t needed to despatch rivals.

The way now to cripple an opponent is by making allegations of corruption or leanings towards Communism.

Indonesia as a modern secular democracy is the official version of the Republic born in 1945.  The parallel universe continues as a nest of scheming oligarchs forever working to amass fortunes, build feudal dynasties and leave a legacy of great structures for future admirers.

Just as it was in the 14^th and 15^th centuries.

Much of the little that we know comes from the Nagarakretagama, a eulogy and travel history written on lontar leaves by the court poet Mpu Prapanca in 1365, and now in the National Museum in Jakarta.  In 1894 it was rescued by a Dutch philologist from a fire in a Lombok palace when attacked by the colonialists.

Other sources include inscriptions on monuments and the walls of abandoned temples including Borobudur.  The world's largest Buddhist monument was rediscovered by Stamford Raffles when he was Governor of the Dutch East Indies between 1811 and 1817 and recounted in his History of  Java.

Pulling all the sources together with the gaps filled by an imaginative writer we have a well-written treasury of good research.  Almost 20 per cent of Majapahit is footnotes and bibliography, but no index - a gnawing frustration for dippers and recallers.

The collapse of the empire around 1527 came through a confluence of attacks by Islamic armies, factional feuds, fights over succession, incest, natural disasters and the apparently bloodless death at 74 of the era's architect Gadjah Mada.  

The 'rutting elephant' was once the most powerful person in a court of thrusting schemers and betrayers.   An image shows a plump-faced man, not a Tom Cruise action adventurer, though that was also his role.

He was the low-born schemer of the time, able to out-think all around him and come out on top, advancing the empire and himself.

A devious ambitious military and political strategist he's now praised as the hero of Indonesia and his name embellishes the military and academia.

When militant Islam set out to cleanse the land of other faiths the Majapahit capital (now Trowulan and much restored) was trashed and the people fled east. Which is why Bali is now a majority-Hindu province.

Dutch banker/historian van der Linde spends much time in Indonesia when not in Hong Kong. His book is subtitled 'Intrigue, betrayal and war in Indonesia's greatest empire.'

The plots are complex, the characters even more so, but although the events happened centuries ago they resonate still, much like Shakespeare’s tragedies.

Today we have a president abandoning a party and its matriarch that put him into power - then levering his son to take his place through a cunning plot worthy of a Majapahit conspiracy.

This young businessman, Vice President Gibran Rakabuming, is linked for the next five years to a disgraced former military general twice his age. All the ingredients are here for a sinetron (TV soap opera) or a political crisis.

Centuries ago leaving a legacy meant building temples to honour the reigns of royals. Today it’s the construction of the Jakarta replacement Ibu Kota (capital) Nusantara in East Kalimantan dominated by a grand presidential palace.

It's doubtful this will be as enduring as the candi of the Majapahit era and the tales of the time.   

Despite van der Linde's meticulous squirrelling among the archives and ruins, we'll never know how much is true because victors write history's first drafts.  But many of Majapahit's yarns are entertaining, often bloody yet helpful in understanding Indonesia and its people today.

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    First published in Australian Outlook, 19 June 2024: 

https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/book-review-majapahit-intrigue-betrayal-and-war-in-indonesias-greatest-empire/

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See another review here: https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/book-review-majapahit-intrigue-betrayal?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=5fcu&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

INDONESIA'S CARBON CRISIS: WILL ISLAM GET DIRTY HANDS?

 Duncan Graham

Coal River - Samarind

Nahdlatul Ulama (revival of the scholars) is Indonesia and the world's largest Islamic organisation claiming almost 100 million members. If it digs coal it could become mega-rich.  How dirty work marries with sending souls to paradise only Allah knows.

President Joko ’Jokowi’ Widodo has four months left in office, enough time to sow division before handing the job on to the elected former cashiered general Prabowo Subianto.

In May Jokowi signed a decree letting religious groups apply to be the first shovel in the ore for special mining concessions. Not quite a gift from the gods as the Republic is supposed to be monotheistic, but pretty close.

This allows him to make good on an old promise to religious groups to take over mining concessions to raise funds. What the hell has coarse commerce got to do with matters of faith?

One answer:  Politics, or as the Jakarta Post described it clumsily because pig meat is taboo to Muslims, “halal-certified state-sponsored pork barreling”.

It added: “The government has come out with one of the most ridiculous policies in the history of this nation … It’s now up to the country’s largest Muslim organization to back out on moral grounds.”

But will the lure of lucre prevail over Islam’s obligations to be honest, fair and righteous?

NU supported the Prabowo ticket in the February presidential election as did Jokowi who was constitutionally barred from taking a third five-year term.

Instead, he engineered for his eldest son Gibran Rakabuming to contest as number two. He's now Vice-President elect.

The lead-up to the inauguration is a time to settle debts and cement alliances. If enough minor parties join the Prabowo-Gibran winning team, opposition will be left to NGOs.

Most are poor and poorly equipped to do more than their narrow roles, like advocating for human rights.

The churches have already knocked back Jokowi’s offer saying that fossil fuels are not their job and they’re better at consulting holy books than mining manuals. The mosques are dithering.

Second behind NU is Muhammadiyah (followers of Muhammad) with 60 million members. It tends to attract the better-educated middle class.

At present it’s pondering the Jokowi offer, but observers reckon nothing will happen as the gift has been pegged only for the NU.

The six government-approved religions, Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism have charity wings.  They run schools, hospitals, clinics and retirement homes principally for their members and could probably improve their work with mining profits.

But supping with this devil will need a long-arm excavator.

Investment Minister Bahlil Lahadalia was reported as saying  the handout was "in return to their past services during and after the country's struggle for independence … you are investing for the hereafter." That's something most religions have been doing for millennia.

The government says any faith group that accepts the deal has to run the show themselves.  This means they can’t flog off a mining permit or farm out business to an established company, even though it has the gear and expertise.

That rule crimps expectations of the beneficiaries only needing bigger truck parks and tips to take Haulpaks of rupiah.

A few right-wing congregations believe the earth is for exploitation;  the rest take a more environmentally conscious position accepting that despoiling nature is not part of any Deity’s plan.

The better read will know that most responsible nations are moving away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.

Indonesia is the world's largest coal exporter and third biggest producer; to the distress of those worried about global warming it shows no sign of slowing down; the compound annual growth rate has been seven per cent since 2019.  This year it expects to produce 710 million tonnes.

There are precedents for Jokowi’s generosity though unfair and distressing.  

Last century then president Soeharto gave forestry concessions. Tens of thousands of hectares of virgin growth mainly in Kalimantan (Borneo island) to relatives and mates, particularly army generals, establishing vast business enterprises.

Many wield enormous power today and are part of the oligarchy. We've yet to hear how the profiteers feel about sharing their spoils with the pious.

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 First published in Pearls & Irritations, 18 June 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/indonesias-carbon-crisis-will-islam-get-dirty-hands/