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Indonesian goon reporting in. So, uh, the country is pretty huge, I don't know where to start.
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Oct 22, 2012 15:22
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Munin posted:A good place to start is sharing something which is hitting the headlines locally and give some context around it and how you/your acquantainces as people living there perceive it. Indonesia is a large-rear end country, number 4 in the world in population. The country is mostly water, making us the most tropical country in the world. No one really care about the country though, other than the fact that Bali is one of the islands here. There are hundreds of different ethnicity. I'm not exaggerating. The difference in cultures within the country is enormous, with everyone having their own indigenous languages, traditional clothes and even belief system. It's like a mish mash of different countries (which it is). Nobody really cares about East Timor since the overall population was shut out of any news from there during the Suharto regime. Things have changed since Suharto's regime. There's less monopoly in business, less repression of the populace and the press and the military is not out to beat up anyone looking at them funny. The government is much less tyrannical. The downside to this is the crazies crawled out of their holes and we got our own homegrown terrorists, though the ideology was mostly imported from Malaysian crazies who ran off to avoid capture. It's sadly funny how our laws against terrorism is less aggressive than Malaysia's, when our terrorists killed several hundred people already. There are concerned of radicalization of Islam in Indonesia. The majority of the population are moderates, meaning they don't dress like Arabs all the time. But there are growing minorities growing their beard and making their women wear burqas instead of just hijabs. Biggest news in recent months: There's a superbody institution in Indonesia right now called the KPK, the Committee of Corruption Eradication. They have existed for several years and managed to snag high profile corruption cases. Their status is actually still in dispute since they appear to have some powers of the police and national prosecutors. This might sound alarming but so far, they appear to be the only government institution capable of actually getting results. The police and the court of law (and everything else) is INCREDIBLY corrupt here. So the KPK is the only champion the people have left over corrupt officials. A month ago they snagged a very high profile corruption case involving the police department over traffic and could implicate the head of this department Indonesian police is run closer to the military and controlled by a central headquarter and not district or province based. The case is rumored to implicate the head honcho of the entire national police. The police raided KPK's office, took custody one of its officers who was investigating the case using some bullshit charges and took back all of their investigators and support previously lent (required by law) to the KPK. They're now fighting it in court over who gets to handle the case: KPK to investigate the police or the police to investigate themselves. It's clear as day the police is dirty. Any 3 year old Indonesian knows this. The problem now is how the police no longer cares about their image since their big chief could get under attack. It's no riot on the streets but the case is blowing the gasket over how grey and imprecise the law in Indonesia is. On the better news, Jakarta, the most messed up giant city in the country, got themselves a new governor. The previous governor was noneffective and more concerned in piling up money than actually running the city. The new guy, an upstart mayor or a small town, managed to turn his small town into awesome and winning awards. This is unprecedented, where the incumbent got the support of the biggest political parties (70%-80% of the seats in congress) while the new guy is independent and supported partially by political parties. It's the first time in Indonesian politics where political support meant nothing and good track record and governing skills are more important. The incumbent tried everything: throwing money at voters and even tried ti incite racial protests since the new guy's running mate is of Chinese descent and a Christian. Nothing worked and instead anything they did got mocked in social media. When the new guy won, the entire country was watching and it felt like when Obama won. We're hoping he could actually fix things and not be another Obama.
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Oct 23, 2012 06:49
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kazakirinyancat posted:Someday I hope this happens in the Philippines too. Indonesians have ZERO opinions on Filipinos. The only thing I've heard people talk about Filipinos were jokes the older folks told about Marcos and his wife. Other than that, it's almost no one talks about the country. The anti-Chinese sentiments were largely fabricated and encouraged by Suharto's regime to keep the Chinese population, and his rich cronies, under control. There's little left of that nowadays. There's racism still, it's expected, but the general public now thinks the biggest douchebags are the ones in congress. The public pretty much despised anyone in government, congress and any governmental institutions except for the current president. Some places are better for Chinese descent. I was born and raised in Bali and of Chinese descent. It's not as rough here since Balinese themselves are a minority. South Sumatra is also said to be friendly to Chinese. They despise the Javanese though, especially Madurans. But nobody likes Madurans. Not even Madurans. Vegetable posted:What do you make of the candidates for the 2014 presidential election? It is very early but are there any reformist candidates looking to shake things up? There's no good candidate for 2014. The only strong (out of a group of weak douchebags) is Prabowo, who had ties with Suharto's regime as he was Suharto's son-in-law. He seems capable though as he held high military rankings before. But he's still scummy. If Yudoyhono the current president ran again (he can't, 2 terms already), he's sure to win just from sheer power of charisma and he managed to keep his hands very clean. His political party is currently in turmoil from a number of high profile corruption charges though. The best case scenario I could see is the new governor of Jakarta clean up the city for 5 years, then in his second term run for Vice Presidency along with Prabowo, who is currently his political backer. There's no good candidate for 2014 is also caused by the old powers refusing to pass the reins to younger people. Megawati, the president before Yudoyhono, is even rumored to run AGAIN. She's already too old and already proven an ineffective leader in the past but she just couldn't let it go and pass the mantle to, say, her daughter. Instead she just kept on clinging to her position in her party. Indonesia's political system is too close to feudalism. Singapore could never gotten this rich if they weren't situated right next to Indonesia and Malaysia. They got their labor from Malaysia and thus stalling the need to immigrate a workforce and they became Indonesia's tax haven. Indonesia is INSANELY rich in natural resources. Oil, gas, ridiculous pile of coal, fertile plantations, lots of metals and even rumored uranium deposits in Papua (currently mined by the notorious Newmont mining company, who claimed they're only mining gold). Papua island used to be part of Australian contingent. The people and fauna shared similarities with Australia's. We even got tiny forest kangaroos there. The Papuans are related closer to Australian Aborigenes than compared to, say, Javanese (Java island) or the Sasak (Lombok) or the Dayak (Borneo). Indonesia is like a miniaturized South Asian tribes in one convenient park. The most advanced and stable country in SE Asia is without a doubt Singapore. It's ran like a police state but the people in charge know what they're doing. They're playing 2 giants, Malaysia and Indonesia, like a fiddle, even when Indonesian military might (back in the 80s Suharto's era) could crush any SEA country (except maybe the Philippines). Now I doubt we could even make a dent in Malaysia's better equipped army. Every single rich guy in Indonesia would have hidden accounts in Singapore. This is the smart thing to do of course, since if any turmoil happened, you just board a plane and hide there. ReindeerF posted:This is excellent - thanks for stopping in to our largely ignored thread about our largely ignored region! Uh, they might have mixed up SBYudoyhono's integration of the Independent Aceh Movement (GAM) with the actual crazy jihadists. The GAM integration happened right the tsunami that wiped a good chunk of Aceh's population. The rebellious movement had been fighting there for decades, ever since Indonesia's independence in 1945, for the right to establish their own Islamic law. Suharto was against this so the area because a battleground ever since. But after the tsunami, the situation is right for the new government under SBY to offer peace terms. GAM dismantled itself to become a genuine political party. Aceh is now officially regarded as special autonomous region, where they can exact Islamic law, even public caning of Muslim women found to wander around unaccompanied by male family member. The funny part is how ridiculous this looks when your population is not stuck in a prison nation and could just drive up to the next province and see how life is without the backward law. The region, like any other province in Indonesia, is also democratic. And every election, the least hardline gets elected. They're finding it kinda tough to have an Islamic paradise like Saudi Arabia without an actual no-election-needed monarch. The terrorist johadists that did the Bali bombing twice were not connected to the Aceh rebels. They were home grown terror groups funded by hardline fundie Islamic groups with ideologies imported from Malaysia. The top leaders (one is in jail, two killed by the police over the years) are even Malaysians. There are crazy Indonesian jihadists too of course, like that Hambali guy who were actually part of al Qaeda. He's spending fun time in Guantanamo now.
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Oct 23, 2012 15:36
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Gail Wynand posted:I've never been to the Philippines but I have to give you guys credit, you have the best tourism ads on CNN International. Much better than Malaysia's, I want to stab myself every time their annoying jingle comes on. A bit of random info: Malaysia's tourism ads are very hated in Indonesia. The reason being they used a lot of culture icons that are (reasonably) considered to be more Indonesian than Malay. One time one of their posters even have a Balinese dancer. Bali and its culture and costumes are very iconic and the poster caused problems for the girl in the poster, who is an actual Balinese dancer and she was never asked for permission by the Malaysian tourism board to use her, not to mention the fact Bali is not in Malaysia. A lot of the problems stem from when Indonesia sent some militias to help Malaysia gained their independence. So there's a lot of cultures hopping from Sumatra and Java to the Malay peninsula. But the Malaysian tourism board, even now, doesn't seem to shy from, maybe, trying to confuse foreigners and divert them to Malaysia instead of Indonesia. Compound this with the Indonesian tourism board being entirely incompetent, ineffective and corrupt, so they just try to incite hate towards Malaysia instead of actually have a real tourism campaign.
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Nov 15, 2012 05:52
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Indonesian goon here. Also, I'm pretty sure I'm the only goon in the entire Bali island. I'm no historian so most of the info I got are stories from the old folks, their speculations and some random information here and there from the web. In regards to Indonesia's September 30th event, basically, what I think happened was something like this: Soekarno had brought the country close to bankruptcy through no direct fault of himself but more like no one had any idea how to govern a country like this. The western powers appeared to didn't want to help that much for reasons I don't know. So he got closer with China instead. He took Indonesia out of the United Nations because of border disputes with Malaysia and claimed ready to declare a full out war with Malaysia. No idea of this could ever happened back then. But the Indonesian army was not exactly a close knit entity. Instead of thinking of them as a fully organized entity like in first world countries, the military were made of people who used to be the militia. The army, navy, air force and all the others behaved closer to separate militia groups, except now they got snazzier uniforms. They got their own leaders and agendas. Add to this the fact that one of Soekarno's vice president, Adam Malik, was a CIA asset/operative (pretty sure it's confirmed now due to declassified papers). There was a lot of backroom poo poo going on and it was a powder keg and no commoner knew who stood with who. Soekarno poised to start his own militia, called the Third Army or something, where he was planning to arm the various social parties/groups including the premiere communist party, PKI. Then on Sept. 30th someone killed the highest ranking army general in his home, leading to a whole bunch of murder of high ranking officials and a lot of mayhem. It was civil war and a coup attempt probably by everybody against everybody else. The following day, the apparent winner of the conflict (Soeharto, rumored to be backed by the CIA) started the purge of all opposition. This led to a period of chaos where there was open season to anyone declared to be communist. My grandparents lived through this and the village head looted their house and took all of their assets (2 buses and a truck, grandpa was a transportation business owner). My dad, who lived in the city and were good friends with an army colonel, "borrowed" a couple of Raiders (some sort of special assault soldiers, I think?) and took them to get my grandparents' assets and protect their home. Basically, it was a period while the people at the top were power struggling, the common folk were killing each other just because. Got a grudge against someone? Say he's a commie, you're free to bash his head in. My family didn't get it *too* bad since we lived in a tiny separate island but my dad did got his store burned down because of the fire started everywhere. Soeharto took over, using a letter he claimed was signed by Soekarno giving him full power to quell the "attempted coup" by PKI and then to take over as interim president. There's a rumor that the letter was doctored and the original letter actually doesn't have the latter part. Soekarno spent the rest of his days under house arrest. To cover up on what actually happened during this time, Soeharo's regime started a massive brainwashing and propaganda campaign. Students were fed the doctored version of the events, comic books were released and there's a movie of the event that is played at the anniversary. Knowledge on the events are (were) mandatory and students are expected to "know" more about this than even the struggle for independence. Communists and communism became the face of evil, Chinese names, characters, literature were banned and considered treasonous material, much to the chagrin of my dad, who was an avid fan of chinese kungfu/wuxia novels. At least that bullshit got relaxed later on and pretty much swept under the rug following the government after Soeharto's downfall. Probably 1-3 million people died in the whole thing, no one knows for sure. It wasn't quite a genocide or even an anti-chinese riot, it's just a bunch of powerful assholes trying to kill each other while pointing the finger at something else. Us chinese got the brunt of it socially, but the ones that really got purged were socialists. Indonesian Women Movement, United Farmers of Indonesia, Teachers Alliance, etc, those got lumped up with PKI and purged. Indonesia went from 30+ parties to 3: one controlled by Soeharto, the other 2 were puppets. Ironic that after Soeharto's fall we're back to a couple dozen political parties again, although still there's no socialist party. The 30+ years of propaganda really did a number on the nation's psyche and installing hatred and fear of communism and socialism. Except that Indonesians love free stuff. Free healthcare, free rice, free education, more subsidies, etc, are always promised by shitlords running for office. Just don't call them "socialism".
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Oct 14, 2013 09:38
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I agree with everything you said, but on some details:CronoGamer posted:B) You get the September 30th narrative pretty accurate but I think you're kind of giving Sukarno a free pass. It's impossible to tell since most of the people who perpetrated the violence are dead and the narrative has been completely re-written now, but at least as we've been able to reconstruct it, the PKI were arming themselves and possibly planning a coup against the army. On the night of Sept 30th, not just the top ranking general, but six of the top generals were either murdered in their homes or captured, brought to the communist outpost at the airport, murdered there and then dumped in a well. That's the official version of the event but everyone doubt that's the whole story. One very interesting detail is this: the first high ranking general killed was Ahmad Yani, shot in his home by what the cooked up history books claimed to be a bunch of "PKI operatives wearing fake special forces uniforms". The special forces angle was probably used because his family survived and were eye witnesses. What's likely to have happened is they *were* special forces. It's very hard to find details on what really happened since the people who knew are either dead or would rather bury the whole thing and let the truth be lost in history. There was also the rumor that the top generals were forming some sort of secret council to topple Sukarno going around before the event. That info was included in the propaganda on the event (like the film) but chalked up as a PKI scheme to justify killing the generals. One interesting theory that survived to this day is how all the top generals were killed, even the ones who were *not* rumored to be part of the secret council, were all ahead of Suharto in succession. So all the murders, whether orchestrated by him or not, opened up the path to presidency with only Nasution (in custody) and Sukarno left. Suharto went from a nobody to the guy in charge of all the military forces. He even went as far as cooking up a story of heroism of leading on an offensive of some Allied occupied city on the 1st of May (celebrated as a national day until he got booted out in 1998). A lot of people said the leader of said offensive was actually the (previous) Sultan of (present day) Yogyakarta. My personal take on it is that Sukarno sensed the military was about to topple him, strike first but in the ensuing chaos Suharto took over, very likely with the help of CIA. Sukarno went from a friend to the western powers to friend of the communist powers rather fast, possibly due to the conflict with Malaysia like you said. Or he was just looking for a scapegoat since his policies were plunging the country even further into poverty. My parents recalled their youth of buying goods with cut up money. As in, paper money were so scarce, people were willing to take a piece of paper money cut in half for half the value.
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Oct 28, 2013 07:50
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ronya posted:He was never a friend of the Western powers - he collaborated with Japan during WW2, and fought actual wars with the Dutch returning to re-assert colonial control. To clarify: practically everyone in Indonesia collaborated with Japan during WW2 because they viewed them as liberators. Japan did kicked out colonial Dutch rule and spread some propaganda about being the Big Brother of all asian nations. But pretty soon after, they did a shitload of atrocities that are worse than the Dutch. Then when Japan surrendered to the Allies and withdrew from SE Asia, Sukarno (on pressure by nationalist youth groups) declared independence, citing the reason being there was a power vacuum. But then the Dutch tried re-establish rule along with Allied forces but was met with local resistance.
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Nov 3, 2013 17:36
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ReindeerF posted:I've always wondered how Jokowi even exists and is allowed to live, ever since goons here made me aware of him. He's more genuine than charismatic. Imagine a country that's completely fed up with the political elites. You're a regular farmer or laborer who are sick of these fuckwits yelling at each other while wearing expensive Armani suits and riding around in Lexus SUVs while claiming they're representing you for years. Then came along a guy who can't even *act* like he's part of the political elite. This is a guy who'd rather be trudging along in the mud to inspect his charge than sit behind a desk or inside a luxurious car driven by a chauffeur. If he did this for a year or so or while campaigning you'd think he's just doing it for show. But the guy's been at it for *years*, ever since he was a mayor of city of Solo. Then he became governor of the nation's capital and he was still at it. There are a *ton* of reports of sightings of his actions (not from the press but from social media), how he's always down in the dirt with his people and doesn't act like some big shot at all. Like having a meal with them at the food stall or riding the public transport. Either he has a very, very effective viral PR campaign team that no one has ever heard of because they're so hidden, or the guy is simply genuinely like this. The miracle is actually the fact that Megawati was willing to back him to run for president, considering her ego. He's also not the only one. The mayor of Surabaya is also like him except she's a woman. She is incredibly liked that her political party (also PDIP like Jokowi's) put her to run as a trojan horse to drag a more politically powerful but unpopular running mate to the top. Then they tried to oust her so her running mate could replace her but the people of Surabaya took to the streets and kept her in office. But I don't have delusions on how well Jokowi will do in the president's seat. The first couple of years he wouldn't be able to do jack poo poo since he was never a savvy politicians. Most likely his running mate will set things up first since the guy is a veteran in the game. How effective his government will depends on who he picks for his cabinet. SBY cared little on the effectiveness of some areas so he gave those to random allies, like assigning some fundamentalist fuckwit as a Minister of Tech and Information, a guy who genuinely thought the internet is only good for porn so he had to cap the speed for the well being of the citizen's morals. I'm more concerned with Jokowi's approach in regards to his position. He likes to go inspect places alone, unannounced and in random vehicles, sometimes even public transport, without bodyguards. Worst case scenario, he'd end up as the first assassinated Indonesian president. Also, Prabowo is a dickhead.
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Jul 11, 2014 15:30
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Indonesia is in an interesting yet potentially critical situation right now. You might heard that both candidates declared victory. Prabowo declared it claiming he won due to "internal real count" which to this day refused to ba made public, while Jokowi's camp appeared to be open with their internal counting. There are 12 survey groups who made quick counts, 4 declared Prabowo victory (with a variety of 1-5% lead) while 8 declared for Jokowi (a variety of 3-5% lead). Out of the 4 declaring for Prabowo, 2 refused to be audited by their own association and was fired (one of them doesn't even have an office). All 4 had made quick counts in the past and were mostly wrong. They are being accused of falsifying their data to made quick counting unreliable in the media. At this, they succeeded as now most of the people became apathetic with quick count results. However, the new election system of increased transparency is having *all* of the paperwork of vote counting be scanned and published on the election committee's website. So volunteer groups sprang up to compare notes of their own polling stations and the scanned results, leading to accusations of election fraud in some polling stations (mostly minor). There's also a couple of websites made by neutral, IT savvy individuals who downloaded the scanned paperwork and inputting the data. So the media turned to these sites instead of the survey groups as any attempt to discredit these volunteer sites had been pathetic and largely ignored, as their data is openly available to scrutinize. On these websites, Jokowi appears to be leading by 5% (around 7 MILLION votes), with only 5.6 million votes left to be entered into the database. It's very unlikely Prabowo could claim enough fraud to take over the lead at this point, so instead there's noise already about him taking this to the constitutional court. And there are rumors of a scenario of rioting in Jakarta on the 22nd, when the election committee is scheduled to give their final result. Especially since even until today, Prabowo refused to admit defeat and instead created more rhetoric of election fraud and foreign intervention.
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Jul 17, 2014 05:46
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Indonesian Election News Update: The writing is on the wall. Prabowo's camp had spent the last week trying to maintain the stature that they won the election by "internal real count". His brother had a big mass at some mega church to thank God for Prabowo's victory. Though the data available at the election committee's website showed that on both the district and sub-provincial tabulation he lost, they maintained that the only official word will be this coming 22nd from the election committee. That was last week. What happened the past 2 days is that the election committee had uploaded the current tabulation results on the provincial level. Prabowo's team had maneuvered to contest the results of Jokowi's big votes to delay the official tabulation so the first batch of released numbers of 9 provinces (out of 33 total) was showing Prabowo victory, simply because it had 4 provinces where Prabowo has significant number of votes. He has 9 total. Out of 33. The rest are Jokowi's. The media and the vote watchers has been ignoring their attempt to claim victory since the 9 provinces' vote count mirrored exactly the already available vote count of sub-provinces and districts. So the rest of the count should also be the same. So instead, yesterday, Prabowo declared this election is invalid due to massive fraud so he demanded a repeat. That's right. The man demanded the election be repeated. The committee refused while the media (except the ones in his pocket, who is trying their best not to cover this part) blasted him for asking that since there's nothing in the constitution that would allow this. So instead he demanded that the announcement tomorrow delayed until further notice. The committee again refused saying they're the only who could demand a delay if they see there's a problem meeting the deadline for the tabulation. So Prabowo made a statement he is going to sue them and take them to court for they had broken a criminal law.... somewhere. The committee ignored him and released another 6 provinces' tabulation yesterday (for a total of 15) and Prabowo's lead evaporated as Jokowi is now leading by a hair-thin margin. Except Prabowo already used up 6 out of his 9 big cards on the table, while Jokowi's giant cards filled with votes (East Java, Central Java, Jakarta and all 4 of Sulawesi's provinces which are Jusuf Kalla's home base) is coming out today. I'm a little bit surprised no one had tried to shut him up as he's currently digging his own grave even deeper. The only question left is what is going to be his move once the committee made the official announcement tomorrow. This is the guy who, in 1998, had the rumored plan that could be summed up as: 1. Create riots in the capital 2. ??? 3. PROFIT! Little note that according to the acting president that toppled Suharto in 1998, Habibie, in his memoirs, wrote that Prabowo lead his special forces to enter the capital and surround the presidential palace, claiming it was for the security of the (acting) president, a mobilization not authorized by the highest ranking general, Wiranto. Wiranto had his own special detachment at the time securing the palace and confronted Prabowo. Shortly after, Prabowo was kicked out of the army. This is the guy who almost became our president. wid fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Jul 21, 2014 |
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Jul 21, 2014 05:19
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Prabowo just now made the official statement that he declared the election to be fraudulent and invalid and he refuses to recognize the results (even though it is scheduled to be announced in an hour). He made the statement by himself, signed by himself, as his running mate Hatta Rajasa is not there with him. Weird. Tension is really high right now, especially in Jakarta. Everyone is assuming he is already planning something and whatever it is, his running mate and political party don't want to get involved. Note that Hatta Rajasa was the Minister of Economy and in-law of the current president Yudhoyono, practically his right hand man. So he won't be willing to do anything that would reflect badly on Yudhoyono's governance. EDIT: Aaaand it's over. Prabowo's final tantrums amount to jack and poo poo. Hatta made his own press conference conceding the election. Then the election commission declared the winner. wid fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Jul 22, 2014 |
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Jul 22, 2014 09:18
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Yes. Jokowi is officially president elect. Jusuf Kalla is vice president. Again. Though Prabowo will contest it at the constitutional court. There's no way he'd be able to turn this around since most of his points on election fraud like claiming the official watchdog for the election commission said the commission ignored the recommendation for reelection on some regions had been denied by the watchdog itself. The constitutional court itself is under heavy scrutiny by the Anti-Corruption Commission (KPK) who caught a court judge taking bribes to change some provincial election results a couple of years ago. Everyone's joking that the entire building for constitutional court, even the bathrooms, is currently bugged by the KPK. The current KPK is also full of die-hard anti-corruption fanatics, like this guy Abraham Samad, whose facial expressions during corruption trials looked like he wants to personally strangle corrupters. Funny thing though, Samad was one of the strongest contestant to be Jokowi's running mate back before his candidacy but they opted with Jusuf Kalla instead since both Jokowi and Samad are newbies in high level politics. The biggest argument Prabowo's team is making right now is that they found 2.5 million fraudulent votes. The process of finding this number is incredibly laughable since they just claimed they found fraudulent votes (unproven) in a couple polling stations and then decided that *all* polling stations have these frauds. But even if the court sided with them and declared these votes to be invalid, right now they're behind 8.4 million votes. Invalidating 2.5 million is not going to do jack poo poo. Now there's a rumor that Prabowo is trying to lobby the current president to declare some sort of emergency law superseding the law made by the election commission (of declaring Jokowi as president-elect) by extending his presidency by another year so they could hold another election. But at this point it's futile as the president's right hand man, Hatta, who is Prabowo's running mate, already admitted publicly Jokowi's victory. The current analysis of Prabowo's behavior at the last hour is that he tried to bluff the election commission to delay the announcement so he could maneuver to contest the result without having to go to constitutional court. But the commission just ignored him and handed off the whole thing to constitutional court, which Prabowo's team are publicly crying about.
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Jul 23, 2014 04:43
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Pureauthor posted:I mean, he does have to realize that he's just digging himself deeper at this point? Or is he really so insulated that he honestly thinks this is going to do anything in his favour? Nobody knows. Maybe he thinks this is literally his last shot at presidency (which is likely, since he'd be considered too old in 5 years). He also spent the last 9 years building up his image and electability and spent some ungodly amount of money so maybe he just feel like he has nothing left to loose? There's a pretty good article here about Prabowo's game plan which, I think, mirrored the game plan of Mitt Romney, complete with spreading rumors on the opponent's "real" race and religion. So the downfall might also be due to Prabowo, like Romney, keeping himself in his echo chamber surrounded by sycophants and built such expectation for victory while ignoring reality. It's pretty obvious early when he became a candidate that he was throwing in everything and everyone he could find. His party got popular last election (went from 6% something in parliemant to 11%) because of his apparent message of being the real wind of change in politics. He started as opposition when everyone (except PDIP) wanted to get on board the government coalition train, which is why he got close to PDIP for a while. He managed to create fanatical followers, people who are sick of the current way politics are being played, and lambasted the ruling parties for being corrupt and ignoring the people. But then when candidacy came around, he turned around and pulled these parties into his fold happily, even the ones whose heads are currently under investigation by the KPK. He opened up his coalition for everyone. And I meant EVERYONE. That included hardline Muslim groups, the ones declaring Indonesia must be turned into a shariah nation, the ones who would actually carry the flag of ISIS on the streets. He openly boasted about giving such and such parties seats at his cabinet, even promised to create a position of "great minister" for the current head of Golkar party, Aburizal Bakrie, a man infamously hated for owning the company that caused a mud disaster and dislocated thousands of people and hasn't yet paid restitutions as ordered by the court. He even hinted of remarrying his ex-wife, the daughter of Suharto, thus opening the doors for Suharto's family and cronies back into government. It's like a crazy manchurian candidate scenario that almost worked but blew up accidentally.
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Jul 23, 2014 07:00
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Jokowi's ascent is simply because of the right moment in Indonesia's experiment with democracy. In the 10 years of SBY's rule, the voters have been so disillusioned and pessimistic with the political parties that the politicians had to turn to random celebrities. I'm not kidding. Imagine your local comedians and soap opera actors and actresses running for senate. A good chunk of the people sitting in parliament now are non-career politicians but simply famous or used-to-be-famous people. People are so sick of politicians they'd vote for anyone else with a pretty face. The parties are desperate for anyone who'd appear electable, so they reached out to local, well-known people also even if they were not old time career politicians (aka. people who actually did something with their lives instead of spending their entire time arguing how much of the cut of the people's money they should get). This is how Jokowi got into the ticket for the mayor of Solo/Surakarta. But he was not alone. A number of other people got voted into office for their actual work ethics and results. The mayor of Surabaya is famous for this, a modest, regular looking woman who appears to fit more in the local market than in a mayor's office. These people keep popping up because the parties are desperate for likable, non-shady looking assholes to put on the posters. If you're surprised the powers-that=be let Jokowi got this far, you should look into his running-mate for Governor of Jakarta: Basuki Tjahja Purnama (also known as Ahok, his chinese nickname). This guy is even more hardcore than Jokowi. It's like he has a deathwish or something. First of all, he's Chinese. And a Christian (though he said he doesn't have a religion except the faith in Jesus Christ so the guy is practically an agnostic). And he yelled and screamed at corrupt officials all the time and made his meetings recorded and published on youtube so the people could see how utterly incompetent the officials are. It's like he's Gordon Ramsay and the governor's office is Hell's Kitchen. He famously brushed aside a parliament member who is also not-so-secretly a gang boss who controlled a part of an area in Jakarta. For decades, this guy's gang had controlled an area called Tanah Abang which is a large public road, closed it down and made it into a market, from which they siphoned illegal tax from the merchants there. Ahok cleared the poo poo out of the place and moved the merchants to a proper place for a market, taxed by the province. Then when his political party, Gerindra (Prabowo's party), made the push for the legislation to remove voting for executive offices, he quit the party. So right now he has no backing whatsoever other than obviously Jokowi still got his back (note that he and Jokowi belonged to different parties but right it seems like Ahok is in full-on hate mode for political parties). When Jokowi took office as governor of Jakarta, he kept a subtle, non-confrontational approach to problems. This was only possible because Ahok acted as his bumper, being vocal and confrontational with anyone hindering their work. Kinda like good cop bad cop thing. It's likely Jokowi will do the same with his vice president, Jusuf Kalla.
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Oct 25, 2014 13:46
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Negligent posted:I was on an AirAsia X flight home to Perth two days ago when the captain came on the intercom and said something like "and the weather ... we expect ... is ... to be clear over the Java Sea ... and then the ... Indian Ocean ... maybe a few bumps ... and on all the way to Adelaide" and everyone looked at each other. Dude sounded sleepy as hell, rambling on and pausing every few words. For those not up to date on their Australian geography Adelaide is a city about 2,500 km from Perth. The latest gossip around here is that Air Asia have a higher percentage of shabu using pilots.
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Jan 7, 2015 13:57
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SynthOrange posted:
What's going on here?
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Sep 17, 2015 02:27
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Present. What are you guys asking? I'm far away from the haze though. Not much seems to be done other than Jokowi surveying the sites and ordering his ministers and the governors to do something about it. The problem is it's rather hard to check which are natural forest fires and which are deliberate. Instead they've been busy going over papers and permits of hundreds of companies. The local government is incredibly ineffectual. If this was a non-retarded country, the governor would've resigned after the reports of infant deaths. But nope. Most likely the party in power will get voted in again by the end of the year.
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Oct 22, 2015 06:33
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Grouchio posted:Which political parties are secular and/or liberal, which ones are conservative, and which ones are islamist? Furthermore, how large is the threat of an Islamist supremacy and theocracy in the near future? There is no political party that could be considered "secular". Then again, political parties in Indonesia is without a specific ideology. There are "nationalists" and "Islamists". But in that sense, any party that is not Islamic fell into nationalist criteria. There is not even right wing or left wing. The left wing was purged in 1965-1966 by Suharto after the coup and the surviving parties were his puppets and they had no ideology except "keep the status quo and Suharto in power". So think of political parties in Indonesia as a group of people vying for power and personnel can easily switch allegiance. So not unlike a high profile political gangs. Hell, most of the members were/are gang bosses because they got the man power to do things. The threat of Islamist theocracy is real. It is probable but it does not have grassroot support. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country but they are moderates and actually closer to liberal due to 60+ years under Suharto where any extremism was curb-stomped. The surge of Islamic tendencies is still just pockets of minorities and mostly due to recent external influences. The biggest Islamic political party, PKS, managed to became large due to subterfuge where in the earlier times after Suharto's fall they claimed to be more nationalists than Islamists. The other Islamic parties never got any significant power even if they banded together (25% seats in parliament total, max). That sounds like a lot, except all these parties actually have different doctrines of Islam and some are quite moderate. PKS is gradually losing seats and votes when they came out and showed their true colors of being the most Islamic party among the rest. They're still highest among the Islamic parties though but the movement rejecting them is also getting stronger especially among the youth (which is ironic since their surge of growth is also due to youth movement). But the problem is actually not from the senate but executive branches where they managed to install their people. These extremists are slowly but surely introducing more and more retarded laws that is catered to Sharia law. But they had to not use that word since it's poison and would incite more resistance.
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Oct 23, 2015 01:55
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Grouchio posted:Should the Western friends and allies of Indonesia intervene if things get theocratic fast? (If Indonesia has those) No. There will be more resistance to that more than resistance to Islamification. Suharto's regime drilled us for 60ish years that we were conquered and oppressed by evil westerners (the Dutch) for 350 years (it's a lie) then 3.5 years under the Japanese (kind of, but not really). Western influence is viewed as a negative though everyone loves western products and culture. On the other hand, it's almost impossible for a theocratic government to form without breaking apart Indonesia first. Sure, the majority of Indonesians are Muslims but from the many different branches. There are 2 major Islamic groups (more like associations) called Muhammadiyah and NU. NU is moderate and clashed often with extremist groups. Their base of power is central and eastern Java while the other is more western Java. Note that Java, while the most populated, is one island in the archipelago and has their own distinct culture and ethnic group. The other islands are different ethnic groups even the ones who are also mostly Muslims. To the east side of the archipelago, Islam barely reached there so they're mostly still animism and ancient traditions, like the dudes who bury their dead in the holes by a cliff. Bali is the last stand of Hindu culture while half of Sulawesi is Christian. Even if a theocracy of Islam is trying to gain power, it won't be able to gain popular support and most likely only relegated to Java. Indonesia is also thought to have a rather significant population of Ahmadis, a branch of Islam that's hated by the others because the founder claimed he was also a prophet. The government is trying to protect them but at the same time they don;t want to be labelled as supporters of "heretics". There's no separation of church and state in the Indonesian constitution but there's also no religion that is endorsed as the state's. The national symbol and slogan is also quite secular despite the mention of "God" and there are controversial stories of its formation that it used to include the words "Allah" and "Islam" but was removed by the founders. The interesting part of Islam's history in Indonesia is that the majority of the conversion were brought and done by Chinese traders, mostly to Java. So it integrated into the local culture and beliefs, which were influenced by Buddhism and Hinduism before that, instead of completely eradicating them. A lot of historical sites and artworks were destroyed by the Islam conversion though, but some survived like the world heritage Borobudur. The influence of Middle-east flavor of Islam is a recent thing and mostly started on the north end of Sumatra. That is Aceh, the tsunami hit area and now the special autonomy province where they actually enacted sharia law.
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Oct 23, 2015 09:35
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CronoGamer posted:Headed to see Jokowi speak in D.C. tomorrow. Apparently he had to cancel his San Fran stop because the haze has gotten so bad back home. Is this the worst it has ever been? It's debatable if it's worst ever but it is reaching Jakarta now so it's definitely more visible on the news. As well as people talking about it more since they'd like to blame Jokowi. Reminder that the last election was the first election where only 2 people are running for prez so it divided the voters into 2 camps and people here are very sore losers.
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Oct 27, 2015 15:42
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We're also having a drought/long summer. It's almost November already and just 5 years ago by October it would've been raining almost every day.
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Oct 28, 2015 04:59
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Where I'm at is kind of hidden in my avatar text. Jakarta Post is pretty respectable with a slight liberal slant (I'd call it progressive). I don't have much experience with Globe but from what I've seen online they're pretty similar. The Post is bigger, I think, they are part of Kompas thus part of the Gramedia bookstores/printing conglomerate. I don't think there's any conservative/fundamentalist English news here.
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Oct 30, 2015 07:00
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Fragrag posted:So homophobia in Indonesia is somehow starting to flare up again and quite dramatically. It's a recent trend. There's been some slow, low key movement in trying to expand gay rights but then this folk singer with a religious slant who had been divorced for a couple of months (years?) got into a scandal where he was found sexually molested an early teens under-aged boy. The media decided this should be the ratings boost they needed since the political slapfight between Jokowi and Prabowo's camps are winding down with Prabowo's camp crumbling into dust. So starts the Indonesia Gay Panic 2016. Even people who I once considered to be intelligent started their spiel how kids these days chose the gay lifestyle as a form of rebelling from their parents. Everyone suddenly got their own theories how people turn gay.
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Feb 28, 2016 05:00
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Tranparent DNS proxy at the ISP level. Meaning thise who knows a bit about how internet works and a dollar or two can get a proxy to bypass the whole thing. Imgur was actually blocked a couple of years ago when the minister of information technology was a loving fundie who barely understood how computers work. Then it got unbanned. But they still banned vimeo and gawker for some reason. The aforementioned minister once blocked YouTube due to the mohammed cartoon fiasco but the backlash was so great SBY had to deal with it. So any bullshit they came up with by now just sounds so hypocritical. On the other hand, fundies had been a bit mum on website banning lately since the current minister kept banning hardline fundie and jihad sites. The biggest ISP even blocked netflix a month ago claiming it has pornography in its list even when the government didn't tell them to block it or even had a law about it. It's obvious it's a business move to curb bandwidth usage so popular website banning might not just be about moral outrage.
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Feb 29, 2016 05:45
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He's a serial rage-quitter.
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Mar 2, 2016 16:29
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The Saddest Rhino posted:Thanks for the explanation on the China w Philippines relations, really clears up a lot The communist panic was a smokescreen to cover up the coup de tat. And then it was used to suppress any dissenting voice on the new ruler. This is more of a megalomaniac clinging to power by blaming an easily blamed part of the community and persecuting them as a distraction from real issues. And also spouting grand promises with no logic or actual goals. Basically this is what would happen to US
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Aug 26, 2016 05:00
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