Fighting for Space

An afternoon walk on Jalan Setia Budi, the main street in our Medan neighborhood, can turn into a struggle for survival.

Many offices close around 3 p.m. in Indonesia, which means rush hour starts on the early side. At 3:30 today, columns of cars idled in the heat as drivers leaned on their horns. Motorcycles darted like dragonflies around the automobiles, squeezing along the shoulder and occasionally climbing up on the sidewalk to create their own express lane.

Of course, two-wheeled transportation on a sidewalk requires a contiguous stretch of uninterrupted concrete, which does not always exist in Indonesian cities. Fruit sellers set up their stands wherever they see fit, converting sidewalks into obstacle courses. And today, half the concrete squares on large stretches of sidewalk were pried open and removed, exposing fetid sewage canals below. Moments like these demonstrate why typhoid and Hepatitis A vaccines are mandatory for travel in Indonesia.

When they were accessible, sidewalks proved a tempting transportation option today since the curbside shoulders motorcycles usually favor along Jalan Setia Budi were strewn with mountains of trash. It had all the appearances of a garbage pick-up day, but these piles have lain dormant (or perhaps even grown) during the last 36 hours. With a mayor and vice-mayor thrown in prison for corruption earlier this year, and an interim mayor only designated recently after months of leaderless city government, Medan’s public services have seen better days. Some of Danielle’s interview respondents have reported not having trash picked up in their neighborhoods since last August.

And where are the pedestrians in this labyrinth? Most Indonesians don’t walk very far under these conditions. Between the constant obstructions and the blistering heat, people either avoid afternoon trips or hire a motorcycle cab, further congesting narrow roadway arteries. Those of us brave or foolish enough to attempt a quarter-mile journey on foot end up gingerly navigating our way through occasional seams between vendors’ pushcarts and parked motorcycles. (Even when they’ve stopped moving, the motorcycles can be a nuisance.) It’s also important to steer clear of the cats, chickens or occasional goats that cross your path.

With Indonesia’s 322 people per square mile (to say nothing of its chickens and goats), you often feel like your cheek is brushing up against someone else’s jowl. The country is not as densely populated as Vietnam or Bangladesh, but it’s three times more crowded than the United States on average. What’s worse, poor infrastructure and lack of urban planning exacerbates overcrowding problems considerably. Streets feel twice as crowded when motorcycles are on sidewalks and pedestrians are out in the road.

Sometimes, the space crunch has auditory in addition to physical implications. We enjoy peace and quiet in our more expensive home stay, but in most parts of town motorcycle drivers rev engines just meters away from people’s windows. Those windows don’t have glass, either, so any separation from the street proves impossible.

Attempts to find quiet retreats face interruptions from unexpected sources. In search of such a respite from noise pollution, Danielle and I succumbed to the temptation of an upscale Western-style coffee place today. The drinks are three times more expensive than in the curbside cafes, but the air-conditioning makes the price seem like a bargain when you never have to fight flies or ants for a seat.

But just as we were settling in for two hours of quiet contemplation, a loud buzzing noise like a welding torch emanated from the back of the store where a few staff members were gathered. We assumed someone was making repairs, but it seemed odd they would set a silversmith loose in the cafe. When the buzzing persisted for about an hour, we decided our search for silence had failed. On the way out, we learned that they hadn’t set up a foundry after all; the place had become an impromptu tattoo parlor for the day. In a country where no one seems to have enough room, spaces sometimes have to serve dual purposes.

With these kinds of close quarters, Indonesians don’t seem to expect much privacy. One sign of this blurring of public and private is that small talk touches on what we consider personal topics very quickly. For instance, most people ask Danielle within five minutes of meeting her whether she’s married and has any children. When she answers yes and no, respectively, the following question is always how long she’s been married. For an Indonesian, a marriage of four years that has yielded no offspring inevitably evokes concern about fertility. They don’t seem to fathom the idea that a couple might be waiting for the right time to start a family.

One Chinese woman with her own traditional medicine practice expressed concerns about Danielle’s childlessness and insisted on examining Danielle’s pulse to discern the source of her infertility. This woman’s first diagnosis was that Danielle’s husband might not be fat enough for conception. When Danielle assured this woman that I was taller and heavier than most Indonesian men, the woman replied, “You’re just too tired. You’re working too hard.” There might be something to that last point.

***

Four days after the Jakarta hotel bombings, the country remains on edge. Security has tightened around our neighborhood, and TV news programs have shown creepy footage of a suspected Jemaah Islamiyah bomber entering the Marriott Hotel two days before the attack. Several Jakarta hotels and offices have faced bomb threats over the last few days, and the Jakarta Post reported today that hotels here in Medan have also received threats.

Even so, day-to-day life still feels more or less safe. One unsettling exception came when someone shouted English-language obscenities at Danielle and me from an automobile window earlier today. After three months of Indonesians greeting us with “Hello, Mister,” the two-word salutation we received today was far less welcome. In all likelihood, the outburst probably came from an Indonesian teenager who has watched too many American movies and doesn’t understand what vulgar English words really mean.

The episode surely doesn’t reflect most Indonesians’ attitudes toward foreigners, and our mood improved considerably ten minutes later when members of a boys’ soccer team called us over to talk to them. Several were wearing jerseys from Manchester United, the English premier league team that cancelled its exhibition match in Jakarta against Indonesian all-stars after Friday’s bombings. One of the boys even playfully recited the Indonesian language taglines he’d seen MU players like Wayne Rooney saying in the soccer commercial that has been running on Indonesian TV during the last few weeks.

It was sad to be face-to-face with Indonesians who would have loved to watch their favorite international soccer team play against their nation’s best players. A Manchester United visit would have meant so much to these kids, but for the time being, terrorism has derailed cultural diplomacy and soft power.

The Day After

Posted by John
Yesterday’s bombings at Jakarta’s JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels killed at least eight people and injured more than 50. During the last 24 hours, the world has recoiled from the same haunting images that have dominated the news here: police patrolling amid shredded metal and shattered glass, plumes of smoke shrouding streets, and paramedics carrying blood-strewn corpses out of the rubble.

For Indonesians, the scene had a disturbing feeling of familiarity. The country endured four major terrorist bombings from 2002 to 2005, when the fundamentalist Jemaah Islamiyah organization killed more than 200 people in strikes against Western targets in Jakarta and Bali.

After four years of calm, Indonesians entertained hope that the nightmare of terrorism had ended. Instead, they woke up yesterday to news that bombs once again rocked Jakarta. Once again, foreign visitors were among the victims. Attackers even returned to the same Marriott where a car bomb killed 12 people six years ago.

The Ritz-Carlton and Marriott, regular gathering places for foreign businessmen and diplomats in the upscale Kuningan district, proved particularly inviting targets. Forces critical of Indonesia’s acceptance of international influences see them as symbols of Western encroachment. At least four of the people killed in the bombing were foreigners, including a New Zealand businessman who headed Indonesia’s largest cement company and an Australian mining executive.

During our three weeks in Jakarta earlier this summer, the city was taking security matters very seriously. Guards inspected the trunks and undercarriages of cars entering parking lots for shopping malls, hotels or government buildings. Concrete barriers shielded buildings from possible car bombs. And customers walked through metal detectors before entering Western-owned restaurants like McDonald’s.

With these stricter measures in place, people looking to strike targets in Jakarta would need to alter their strategy. Early reports indicate the suspected bombers did precisely that—instead of relying on a car bomb, the perpetrators checked into the Marriott as guests and assembled their bomb within the hotel.

These initial reports also suggest the bombers belong to Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the terrorist group that conducted attacks in Indonesia earlier this decade and has coordinated efforts with Al Qaeda. Several JI members have been arrested and executed in recent years, but the group retains the ability to strike targets throughout Southeast Asia.

The timing of the attacks seems precisely calculated to disrupt political life in Indonesia. Last week Indonesians turned out to re-elect President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) with 60 percent of the vote. SBY’s first term witnessed economic growth, a sustained anticorruption campaign and the absence of terrorist violence. Now SBY’s domestic reforms will take a backseat as the focus turns exclusively to the government’s response to the bombing and its efforts to capture leading members of Jemaah Islamiyah. To the consternation of many in Indonesia, Noordin Mohammad Top, the Malaysian JI leader who masterminded the 2003 bombing of the Marriott, remains at large.

In a country that relies heavily on international investment and tourism, terrorism has deterred foreign companies from expanding business operations and dissuaded vacationers from taking trips to Bali’s beaches. The Australian government has already issued a new Indonesian travel warning its citizens, who were prominent among the casualties in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings.

Yesterday’s attack has already caused at least one prominent cancellation—the English soccer team Manchester United called off Monday’s game in Jakarta against Indonesian soccer all-stars. The match may be rescheduled in neighboring Malaysia, but Indonesians will be deprived of the chance to see their county’s best players square off against international soccer stars like Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen in Jakarta’s Gelora Bung Karno Stadium. The cancellation will have an economic impact as well, with hotel rooms remaining vacant and food and souvenir vendors losing customers.

The Manchester United visit had been heavily promoted throughout soccer-crazy Indonesia, with humorous TV advertisements (below) and red-and-yellow United billboards throughout Indonesian cities. Several media outlets reported that some Manchester United team members planned to stay at the Ritz-Carlton that was bombed. Their cancellation is clearly not the most tragic part of the Jakarta attacks, but serves as an example that elements of Indonesia’s quest for a quiet, normal national life remain unfulfilled.


For all the horror that yesterday’s bombings caused, they must be placed in the context of the vast and diverse country where they occurred. Since Jakarta occupies the center of the Indonesian political, business and cultural universe, the shockwaves of the attacks were felt through the archipelago. The national government will certainly have to focus its resources on antiterrorism, possibly at the expense of worthy antipoverty and anticorruption programs that could have a beneficial impact throughout the islands.

Yet here in Medan, more than 800 miles away from Jakarta, life continues as usual for most individuals. People organize their lives around their local neighborhoods—buying and selling food at the local market, drinking iced tea with friends in the corner cafe, and playing badminton. None of these activities are likely to attract the attention of terrorists. That’s true even in a major regional capital like Medan with more than 2 million people—residents have ties to Jakarta, but life remains mostly self-contained. Detachment from Jakarta is even more prominent in smaller villages throughout Indonesia that have fewer than a hundred residents, most of whom will never travel to the capital city.

While Indonesians have died in this and other recent terrorist attacks, the bombings of luxury hotels, embassies and tourist nightclubs are aimed more at foreigners visiting Indonesia rather than Indonesians themselves. It’s a pernicious strategy that has the potential to isolate people eager to welcome new visitors and learn more about the world.

In spite of terrorist attacks, anti-Western sentiments have little currency among Indonesians, and everyone we’ve met has asked us about our country and our visit. Perfect strangers have welcomed Danielle into their homes to talk about their lives, their problems and their political opinions and expect nothing in return. This hospitality won’t grab headlines, but it’s a side of Indonesia that deserves at least as much attention as yesterday’s tragedy.

Disrupting Corruption

Posted by John
North Sumatra’s Medan Airport provides the perfect view of the consequences of corruption among Indonesia’s political elite. Jockeying for position among hundreds of passengers around two antiquated baggage claim carousels, you’re left with the impression that Indonesia’s third-largest city of 2 million people deserves better.

For the past 10 years, North Sumatran political leaders have promised better. Money is budgeted for a new airport, but construction has stalled. Each year, local politicians dip into the funds in order to cover other costs, such as financing their own increasingly expensive campaigns. Meanwhile, over at the airport, cranes idle and planes squeeze into crowded terminals.

The story of Medan’s airport — false starts, good intentions and incomplete implementation — is repeated in other public works projects across the country. Part of the explanation lies in Indonesia’s public finances. Almost all Indonesians work in the informal economy and make very little money, which means they don’t pay taxes. Not paying taxes may sound appealing to Americans who grumble about the IRS each year as April 15 approaches, but it also severs citizens from their government.

With little understanding or stake in how the government funds its programs, most Indonesians have low expectations for what their government should provide. The government manages to meet those low expectations, especially since there is genuine ambiguity about who is responsible for basic services — schools, roads and trash pick-up — that Americans take for granted.

Meanwhile, businesses and wealthier citizens tapped to fund the Indonesian government’s coffers move their money offshore whenever they can. It’s often a matter of finding the right government official and meeting his price. Corruption has been a consistent feature of Indonesian politics in the country’s 64-year postcolonial history. Transparency International, an agency that tracks political corruption, placed Indonesia 126th in its 2008 Corruption Perception Index of 180 countries. That’s slightly behind Honduras and just ahead of Libya.

Two new features of Indonesian politics promise meaningful change, however. First, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (“SBY”) has had a far less accommodating attitude toward political corruption during his five years in office. The government’s anticorruption commission even prosecuted a member of SBY’s extended family accused of wrongdoing. Here in Medan, both the mayor and vice-mayor recently landed in jail for embezzlement.

SBY’s anticorruption consistently comes up in Danielle’s interviews with Indonesians and accounts for much of the president’s popularity. If he wins next week’s presidential election by as large a margin as projected, his meaningful accomplishments in anticorruption will be a major reason why. For some sense of the change that has occurred in the SBY era, Transparency International’s Corruption Index as recently as 2001 placed Indonesia ahead only of Nigeria, Uganda and Bangladesh.

The second change on corruption comes from the Islamic-inspired Justice and Welfare Party (PKS), which has served as a gadfly on this issue during the last decade. While I bemoaned the political confusion that has emerged with the proliferation of political parties in Indonesia, one real advantage has been that success by new parties like PKS shows that people are willing to listen to parties that take corruption seriously.

PKS has garnered Western press attention because of its links to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and its professed intention to implement sharia (Islamic law) in Indonesia. Less noticed, however, has been PKS’ fight against corruption, which accounts for much of its popularity. The party has become so successful at making corruption its signature issue that one sex worker Danielle interviewed as part of her research said she would vote for PKS — even though the party’s insistence on sharia means it would hardly look kindly on this woman’s profession.

In most Indonesian towns and villages, political parties still offer money, rice or other goods on the eve of an election in exchange for votes. Rather than receiving sustained public services from the government over time, this one-time bribe from political parties is often the extent of constituents’ interaction with the political system.

PKS’ influence is challenging this arrangement, however. During the April parliamentary election in Medan, several mosques gathered up religious clothes and prayer rugs that political parties had donated. They told parties to come retrieve these items — no one would be allowed to bribe their way into office using the mosques. Partly because of the attention PKS has brought to corruption, religious figures are unwilling to passively accept it.

PKS earned 7 percent of the vote in Indonesia’s parliamentary elections in April — not enough to allow them to run a presidential candidate, but enough to make them a potential kingmaker in Indonesia’s coalition politics. For this election, they’ve cast their lot with SBY’s Democratic Party. While the parties disagree about social issues and the role of Islam in Indonesian politics, they can find common ground on anti-corruption initiatives. SBY will probably have to find important places for PKS leaders in a second-term presidential cabinet.

It remains to be seen whether SBY’s Democratic Party and PKS — both relatively new creations — will have staying power in the Indonesian political landscape. PKS’ successes in fighting corruption mean they will remain relevant, if not a major party. And if the president’s party consolidates its legacy of anti-corruption, it will go a long way in helping it establish institutional permanence after SBY.

For all these successes in challenging the culture of corruption in Indonesia, however, nostalgia persists for Suharto, the president who set up one of the world’s most corrupt governments during his 33 years of rule. Suharto’s crony kingdom began to unravel when disgust with members of Suharto’s family and inner circle lining their pockets reached a breaking point during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1998.

Still, historical memory has been kind to Suharto. The poorest Indonesians have not all seen consistent gains during the SBY era. Several SBY supporters told Danielle in interviews that while they are happy with the current president, particularly his anti-corruption efforts, they would definitely vote for Suharto if the former president were on the ballot.

“Suharto may have been corrupt, but he left something for the rakyat kecil (little people),” one said.

Those “little people” still vote in large numbers in Indonesia. Absent meaningful changes in Indonesians’ economic circumstances, a populist who can convincingly pose as the people’s champion — regardless of his or her political platform — may galvanize a new political movement in the post-SBY era.