Jakartass - Asian Correspondent?

I've been invited to join Asian Correspondent (AC), a new online news portal, as their Jakarta stringer. I'm flattered but ....

First up, I think AC is an admirable idea. The Online Journalism blog, from which I've lifted a few bits, gives much of the background .

- CEO James Craven believes that instructive blogging should be paid.
- AC is a news site intended to report and aggregate news and information from the continent.
- Craven hopes to capitalize on the inarguable talent that lies in the blogosphere, and also tap into the mobilizing power of the Internet that is so exclusive to blogs and citizen media.
- To achieve this, Craven and his team hand picked thirty-five bloggers spanning thirteen different Asian countries after a careful survey of the region’s blogosphere, based on quality of reporting, relevance and popularity.

As I said, I'm flattered and the pay would cover Our Kid's school fees, which are a considerable proportion of my monthly expenditure.

However, several bloggers, although supportive of AC, have decided to remain independent.

Absolutely Bangkok is one of them.

- Writing for Asian Correspondent wouldn’t be subject to direct editorial control or restrictions. Any blogger on board keeps on writing what he or she has been writing all along.
- The initial agreement is good for one year (or a trial period of three months - J). I would have lost any control over layout and comments for one year. So what, you say. Why say no to many thousands of more hits. Call me a romantic and the design of aB.com (and Jakartass) boring and content so-so, but somehow this unimportant little site grew from nothing into something and, seriously, hidden somewhere behind AC’s main portal I’d fear to descend into oblivion among dozens of outstanding fellow bloggers chasing headlines and a front mention on AC.

For the sake of independence, what’s it worth?

My dilemma is that I fear I would have to write for a whole new readership and strive for greater consistency.

To some, I'm an "opinionated old fart", I suffer from ADD but yet I earn respect .... from entire communities for the understanding of the foreign culture you live in, indeed your long established reputation on the internet allows you to further your credentials and qualifications via other mediums. Obviously, from your years of being here, we could all learn something - we're not demanding an anthropology title.

And therein all that lies my worry. I was invited to rewrite Culture Shock! Jakarta because of Jakartass. My blog is essentially the diary of a life of a long-term resident in the Big Durian, yet I write from the perspective of my British upbringing. I rarely write about other Asian countries or consider how Jakarta/Indonesia fits in geopolitically, so Jakartass serves a relatively small community.

I have written to AC to ask if they'd consider a Letter From Jakarta, perhaps bi-weekly, whereby I could continue Jakartass basically as it's always been with its references to my London interests such as Charlton Athletic and all those other titbits which take my fancy or are strictly personal.

Meanwhile, I'm perhaps leaning towards signing up but would like the input of regular readers.

What say you?

Please leave a comment or, if you prefer, email me.
  ¶ 9:00 AM |

  Peace Is Restored.

Or is it?

A meeting was held on our terrace for an hour or so following the fracas. Our first echelon RT, an old friend, and second-echelon RW who'd encouraged the yobbos to congregate outside his house, "Er Indoors and her youngest sister who lives with us were in attendance. I think (hope) Our Kid slept through it all. One of the street hooligans was also there. His name is Angga, pronounced 'anger', which I did think apt except that he seemed prepared to listen.

Throughout the meeting, I didn't clean up my wounds: the most noticeable was the blood that had streamed from the small cut below my eye. ('Er Indoors took a photo for future reference.) Of major concern to our local 'authorities' was that I might call the police. Certainly it was a tempting thought, but I figured that if we pressed charges then we'd make permanent enemies for however long we continued to live here.

What I had confirmed was that all those guys sitting around every night are local, mainly of Betawi stock, and all unemployed.

The Betawi (orang Betawi, or "people of Batavia") are the descendants of the people living around Batavia (the colonial name for Jakarta) from around the 17th century. The Betawis are mostly descended from various Southeast Asian ethnic groups, plus Arab, Chinese, and Indian brought to or attracted to Batavia to meet labour needs, including people from various parts of Indonesia. They have a culture and language distinct from the surrounding Sundanese and Javanese. The Betawis are known for their piety towards Islam, as well as their short temper and their openness to others.

Ah, yes, their "short temper". It's too late for regrets, but I really should have stopped to reflect rather than charging into their den and upturning their carrom board. But when you see your wife surrounded by a bunch of jeering layabouts, what's a real man to do, eh?

Having sorted out the non-appearance of the police - this time only, I asserted - Pak RW proposed a compromise: the playing of carrom would cease at 10pm. But, we asked, who would enforce that? Besides, even if there wasn't someone's parlour available, why didn't they play in the daytime? They're all unemployed, many relying on their wives' earnings as cleaners, laundry maids or through running a small food stall, and need some 'entertainment' to occupy themselves. Two nights ago, I was it..

Yes, unemployment is a major factor in Indonesia, with over a million contract workers being laid off in the past year or so. That's why we pay over the going rate to the various ojek (motorcycle taxis) drivers we use, feed our street crazy, and slip the occasional note to those who give us help, however small.

For a few months we provided the capital for the lad who pushed his cart of vegetables around our streets. He paid us back with the choicest veggies. (The last we heard, he'd buggered off to Bogor to become an illegal gold miner.)

So it's not as if we live aloof from our locale.

All that aside, I decided to offer a possible solution, one that could both rebuild the lost community spirit and get the yobbos off the street with some money in their pockets.

All those years ago when I first moved in, there was a system of having our electricity bills paid by the street secretary. Instead of each householder forking out for transport to the local electricity board office, but now at a bank branch, just the one person went and paid the bills of each household who added a 'fee' of, say, half the regular transport costs. A win-win system which generated a considerable sum per month. Our street built up a stock of chairs and tables for the wedding receptions and occasional funereal lie-ins when all and sundry arrive from near and far to pay their respects.

I suggested that this could be revived. Furthermore, perhaps something could be done about our rubbish collection. There isn't a system in Jakarta of sorting organic and non-organic waste, yet there are a few kampungs in Jakarta which have developed profitable composting enterprises.

Ours is a fairly densely occupied area so there is surely scope for a non-profit community run organisation which could operate these and other projects. Our RT certainly liked the notion, particularly as it could be operated on quite a large scale involving the other communities roundabout, from an elite complex to our neighbouring kampung where the street lads all live.

'Er Indoors is not so sure, however.

Orang Betawi have an inclusiveness, much of it based on landgrabs which have seen them marginalised by rich folk as Jakarta has expanded. Unfortunately, they are also seen as being non-entrepreneurial, lazy and shiftless. We can certainly name a few individuals from around here who fit that stereotype.

At the end of our lengthy pow-pow I proposed that we exchanged mutual apologies. The RT and RW put this to the gang, who were still gathered opposite, and they trooped in a line through our front yard and we shook hands. A few seemed sincere.

Engineering a change of mindset which embraces all our differences would be hard work. I believe it is possible - I have to - but can others be convinced?

Only time will tell, long after my wounds have healed.
  ¶ 11:00 AM |

  Bloodletting

I've lived in Jakartass Towers for nigh on 22 years and seen many changes. Empty plots which once were play areas or parking spaces have been built on, and our back streets have turned into daytime speedway tracks for our local hell's cherubs on their souped up mopeds or nighttime parking lots for local residents. There are no communal meeting places other than our front parlours.

Security has been a constant, with streets barred after 10 or 11 pm and manned by locally paid security guards known as hansip, who patrol the surrounding streets at regular intervals much like London's night watchmen who were replaced in 1829 by a police force established by Sir Robert Peel (His name accounts for 'bobbies', the word used by most Londoners in preference to 'pigs'.).

I've written elsewhere about the Indonesian system of community control - although monitoring might be a better word - operating literally from the ground up to the highest echelons of the nation's bureaucracies. We've known our area heads for as long as we've been here and generally maintained good relationships with them, not so much because we've had to but because we're willing participants in community affairs and want a quiet life..

A year ago, the second-echelon community leader, who lives opposite us had a new security post built outside his house. We wondered then about the need and figured that as he was newly elected - and, yes, we've had an electoral system for such positions since long before reformasi took hold in 1998 - he was somewhat arrogantly displaying his 'power'. There was certainly no need for a new post, not with through traffic barred from the street at night. (What robberies there have been have always taken place in daylight.)

The two hansips he installed quickly incurred our wrath by watching, with the volume turned up to 11, broadcasts of dangdut music, a fusion of Arabic, Indian, Malay, rock and other stuff accompanied by what certain religious leaders term 'pornographic' singers. It's a genre that is incredibly popular within the urban kampungs, the cramped areas of cheap housing occupied by the poorer, generally underemployed, citizens.

In the past few months, our nights been plagued by noisy street parties of as many as twenty presumably unemployed youths playing carrom, a table top game with similarities to billiards, but played with small discs rather than balls and cues. It's a fine skillful game for two or four players - but not at one in the morning. The raucous cheers have disturbed us many times. Given that we have to get up before 5 so that Our Kid is ready for the school bus and I am awake enough to set off on my daily rounds, we have been royally pissed off many times and lodged complaints.

Last night, I awoke to hear 'Er Indoors outdoors berating the gathered gang. She's been quite sick for a week or two so we're all a bit more stressed out than usual and her language was unsurprisingly angry and direct. I got up and went to the front gate and spotted her surrounded by the tribe who were laughing, jeering almost.

Without thinking, I went up to them and angrily declared that we pay for security guards and not a bunch of premen (hoodlums). I then - big mistake this - upturned the carrom board. Next thing I knew, I'd been sent flying forwards, smashing my head on the corner of their TV and losing my glasses in the process. The latter seemed to be my biggest problem, but I hadn't taken into account the propensity for Asians to run amok.

The horde had turned very violent and along with their punches and kicks were wielding broken bricks, bottles and bamboo sticks. I have a cut beneath my good eye, grazes down my arms and what might be a cracked elbow. It could be worse - my glasses, thankfully, are still intact.

But I have to lose a rare day's income as I've spent the rest of the night typing, one-handed, this post and also tomorrow's: Peace Is Restored.
  ¶ 4:30 AM |

  Girding Our Loincloths

It's not just the middle classes which are revolting, although their fight against the alliance between the court mafia, businessfolk and their political chums for the country's all-pervading corruption is what must worry SBY the most.

Elsewhere, such as in Riau, Sumatra, (part of which is currently submerged following heavy rains), villagers are rallying in support of an environmental camp established two years ago to protect the forests against their rapacious destruction by PT Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper, one of Indonesia's largest paper companies. 11 foreign Greenpeace activists have been deported, ostensibly for violating their tourist visas by joining the protest against forest destruction. They had packed ready to leave last week but had stayed at the request of the local villagers.

It has been alleged that PT. RAPP had paid up to Rp.200,000 to a group which had tried to forcibly remove them, so the police acted "for security reasons".

The camp remains, now run by the Forest Rescue Network Riau (Jikalahari), an alliance that includes the Indonesia Forum for the Environment (Walhi), Transparency International Indonesia and local tribal groups.

Elsewhere in Sumatra forests have been destroyed in order to create palm oil plantations, but 'suitable' land is just about exhausted, as it is in Kalimantan. The largest remaining forests are in West Papua, a province under military rule.

News is scarce from there as few can get the necessary permits to visit. However, what does leak throgh makes disturbing reading.

A new report released by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Telapak entitled “Up for Grabs” exposes how five million hectares of land, most of it forested, is being targeted in Papua by powerful companies seeking to cash in on projected demand for biofuels, derived from crops such as oil palm, and other commodities. This land grab is provoking conflicts with local communities and threatens the third largest area of remaining tropical forests on Earth.

Field investigations carried out by EIA/Telapak at seven locations in Papua and West Papua Provinces during 2009 reveal a stark picture of government condoned exploitation of traditional landowners, many of whom are being enticed, tricked and sometimes coerced into releasing large swathes of forested land for plantations on the basis of unfulfilled promises of development benefits such as improved transport, schooling, and housing.

In one case EIA/Telapak encountered a four year old boy, son of a local landowner, who had to sign a contract so that the plantation company could ensure control of the land for decades.

This does not fit well with the closing remarks at the weekend of the Papuan Biodiversity Conference from the Papua Governor Barnabas Suebu. He said that the residents of Papua and the central government must work together to encourage the international society to preserve the environment for the future.

"I challenge all parties to better conserve Papua's natural environment," Barnabas said. "Hopefully we can be an example for other countries.

"Let us save Papua, Indonesia and the planet."

Methinks that this is yet another cause that the 'street parliament' should examine.
  ¶ 7:30 PM |

  Is SBY A Genius?

I only ask because he's currently attending the APEC conference in Singapore and next month he's off to Copenhagen "to give a boost to global negotiations to reduce greenhouse gas emission".

He's facing a lot of criticism back home for not interceding in the four ring circus that is the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) v the National Police, the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) and the newly elected national legislature.

He talks of allowing the due process of law in the case and of eradicating the 'court mafia'. The first is eminently sensible, yet there is no news of an action, any action, which will achieve the latter. Because corruption is now endemic throughout the country, perhaps he is calmly developing a long-term strategy. Perhaps too he is going to act on the recommendations from the Team of 8 he set up to question all the circus performers.

That witnesses and players have withdrawn testimonies and now say that the senior police and AGO prosecutors were the instigators of a frame up of the head of the KK, Antasari, in a murder case and that there is no evidence that Bibit And Chandra took bribes is 'proof' of what the public has long suspected.

And it is the public, essentially the middle classes, which is now driving matters through what the Post has labelled a street parliament.

As it hasn't taken long for the newly elected national legislators to face public scorn, the street and online support for the victims of framed corruption fighters offers a strong counter-balance against the entrenched Suhartoists.

Perhaps this is what SBY is seeking. Although he has the popular electoral mandate, he must know that he cannot depend on his parliamentary coalition, not least because they will be continually manoevering ahead of the next round of elections in order to best capitalise on the rewards (in financial terms!) that political power confers.

The only problem is that the electorate is, by and large, complaisant. If one were to use the schooling analogy, the electorate is still in compulsory education: the Sukarno presidential era was the kindergarden, the Suharto era was grades one to six, and we're now in the high school, rebellious teenage years. This is when taking responsibility is a major part of growing up, yet parental guidance is generally available when sought.

If the net result of the SBY era is entrance into the university of life with the understanding that personal freedom and enterprise depends on mutual respect rather than the playground bullying of earlier years, then he will be recognised as a great man, if not exactly a genius.

And the education of our children and grandchildren will be that much more effective.
  ¶ 2:30 PM |

  I've Got The Write To Sing The Blues

Thankfully for you all, I don't sing in public. I don't often sing in my bathroom either, but that's because its acoustics aren't as good as others I've splashed around in.

As to whether I consider myself qualified to sing the blues, the answer is an unequivocal no. I’ve been done wrong, and had my fair share of setbacks, but my life has been a bed of roses compared to people who could really do justice to the blues. I could even sing a blues song if I had drunk enough gin, or you held a gun to my head, but it would convince no one, and believe me, I’m not complaining.
© John Merchant

However, and only relatively recently here in Indonesia, I do have the right to write, and moan and sigh, and sit and cry. I'd like to say that we all do, but as elsewhere, there are always those who are denied that right because they don't have the tools.

Income disparity is obviously the key. Those with 'surplus' income have access to the media, albeit with a few controlling what we are expected to believe and how we are expected to conform. Education costs, so many poverty stricken families are forced to send their children out to earn income, thus restricting knowledge to the haves. (This is not the place to examine the fundamental faults of a knowledge-based schooling system.)

Some of us are 'lucky' to have access to the internet, a technology which empowers those of us willing to challenge the entrenched elite. Again, though, for all the fine words emanating from the latest Minister of Education about connecting all schools to the internet, some don't have electricity, let alone the bandwidth.

So, I'm lucky. I can, therefore I do.

And my main moan today refers back to last weekend's Jakarta International Blues Festival.

The original blues were sung by the children and grandchildren of former slaves who were indentured sharecroppers working those cotton plantations in the southern states of the USA on which their recent ancestors had worked.

The blues were created at a time when those in the Delta realised that they had not been truly emancipated. From 1890 onwards, blacks recognised that religion spiritually, but not necessarily physically, rescued them from their brutal situation. This manifested itself through the blues, where individuals could express their resentment and lack of faith in America and white society.*

The white man could get education and he could learn to read a note, and the Negro couldn’t. All he had to get for his music what God give him in his heart. And that’s the only thing he got. And he didn’t get that from the white man; God give it to him.
Willie Thomas interviewed by Paul Oliver August 7th 1960

Eventually, with industrialisation and the outbreak of World War 1, there was a mass migration from the plantations, by now ravaged by the boll weevil, to the factories of cities such as Chicago. Although the pay and conditions were poor, at least the work opportunities offered hope. And electricity, thus giving rise to urban blues, as opposed to the acoustic rural blues of the Mississippi Delta, which continued to 'document' life's travails.

Strangely, it was in Britain, rather than the USA**, which embraced this music.

Almost in passing, in the late-1950s and early-1960s, Chris Barber was mainly responsible for arranging the first UK tours of seminal blues artists such as Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and Muddy Waters. This, along with encouragement from local enthusiasts such as Alexis Korner and John Mayall, sparked the interest of young local prospective musicians such as Peter Green, Eric Clapton and the members of the Rolling Stones in the blues and caused the British blues explosion that in turn resulted in the British invasion exported back to the US in the middle to late sixties.

And this took place during my teenage years and, along with my father's jazz record collection - jazz itself being a branch of the blues tree, formed and continues to inform my musical education.

Music has the power to move us.

It can make me cry. Check out the second movement (Adagio) from Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez (Adagio), or On The Way Home by one of Indonesia's master guitarists, Dewa Budjana.

Or laugh.


Referring back to my previous post, it is part of Sue Bonnington's musical heritage, and Jan Akkerman's too, and presumably Mike Wilger, who I chatted with but whose set I missed, mainly due to the lack of accurate scheduling information. I therefore also missed the set by Gigi with Dewa Budjana. Would they have moved me?

Apart from SP and me during Sue's set, I saw no-one dancing on Saturday night. Where was the display of rapport, of recognition? Maybe Slank who have performed in support of the KPK or Iwan Fals in his anti-Suharto heyday would have captured the essence of the blues, an essentially 'honest' music as it's all about soul, humanity's inner core.

I do applaud any effort to promote live music here, but I wish it wasn't so 'commercialised', presented as a 'gift' from Gov. Fuzzy Bodoh or a promotion for cigarettes (or Heineken, or Pond's Whitening Cream).
....................................................
*Asterisks denote passages taken from Blues Culture in the Mississippi Delta 1890 - 1920, the unpublished dissertation by Son.No.1 (1999)

**Respectable white citizens criticised the lack of cultivated black music forms and the savagery of their dancing whilst themselves performing the Charleston - which bore a remarkable resemblance to a West African Ashanti ancestor dance.
  ¶ 2:00 PM |

  Have fun, get angry

Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play. And I expect that it will increase, no question about it.
Al Gore

Although he's referring to climate change, Gore could well be referring to any number of causes, from global to local. Righting the wrongs of authoritarianism is a constant battle and democracy gives us the freedom to voice our opinions.

Mobilising the masses needs a spark, something that captures the imagination. Indonesia is lucky to have had the National Police chief detective Comr. Gen. Susno Duadji. Under investigation by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) for his role in freeing up the $18 million deposit of oligarch Boedi Sampoerna frozen in the failed Bank Century, a wiretap recorded him mocking the KPK, likening it to a small lizard (cicak) fighting a crocodile (buana) - the police.

Hence the 'logo' to the left. Millions have sided with the KPK; one million alone have signed on to a Facebook group supporting the two deputy chairmen of the KPK, Chandra M. Hamzah and Bibit Samad Rianto, who are generally believed to be the victims of a frame up organised with the connivance of the police and court mafia with rich corrupt businessmen.

So the rakyat is at long last finding its voice siding with the underdogs. Prita Mulyasari who exercised her right to send friends an email outlining the maltreatment she received from Omni Hospital is still on trial for defamation, yet has support from most sectors of society.

There are many such cases. From the assassination of Munir to the refugees of the Sidorajo mudflow, victims have the implicit support of the public, yet until now righteous anger has done little to assuage their suffering. Perhaps now, thanks to we little lizards, their relief is on the horizon, and that must frighten the 'guilty' parties, even if they feel no shame. For far too long Indonesia's political and business classes have not cared to listen, hiding behind their pompous self-regard and wilful disregard for others beyond their circles.

It's not as if there hasn't always been widespread awareness of societal ills. However the fear of taking on the might of the monied classes has prevented previous mass social movements. Approaching the police, for example, can be both brutal and expensive, as an Amnesty report issued in June this year made clear. Hopefully now they will realise that they are but the guardians of all sectors of society rather than those few who could afford to supplement their admittedly low incomes.

To be fair, it's not just the Indonesian police who appear to have operated within a "culture of impunity", immune to public criticism and complaints.

In the past four years, London's Metropolitan riot squad has received more than 5,000 complaint allegations, mostly for "oppressive behaviour". However, only nine – less than 0.18% – were "substantiated" after an investigation by the force's complaints department.

In exposing these abuses and institutionalising reforms, there are hopes of equality before the law. Here in Indonesia, there are still expectations that SBY will exercise his presidential prerogative in this regard, but as yet we only have word of his intentions. Commissions of inquiry and committees are established to make further investigations, the results of which are rarely aired.

The public has a right to answers and must continue to seek them. How they (we) do so from now on has vital implications for the future of demokrasi. The danger of repression remains, not least if SBY should fear for his position which is perhaps not as secure as his popular mandate and government coalition might indicate. For example, a major coalition partner, the Golkar Party, has already begun criticising SBY over his handling of the Bank Century affair in the hopes that the public will side with it in the next round of elections just over four years hence.

The public is already wise to the fact that that legislators have been proven to be as corrupt percentage-wise as the police and court mafia. Tactically, therefore, it is important that civil protests remain not only peaceful but also politically non-partisan.

Humour is a wonderful weapon especially when your foes have little sense. I hope to see satire, street theatre, more murals, cartoons and comic strips used in the fight for an equitable society.

Fair enough?
  ¶ 7:30 AM |