My recent posts have been, (mostly), about my adventures in my latest country of residence, Indonesia. I have had some wild and crazy experiences so far but nothing as unexpected and completely out of character for me as my inexplicable interest in politics. I can only guess that it may have something to do with my disenchantment with politics in my own country, which is absolute. Well maybe not absolute. I am a bit interested to see whether Harper will be able to sell all our fresh water to France before it gets contaminated by fracking and/or oil and bitumen spills. Harper is a sell-out but I am not convinced we'd be in better shape with any other of the corporate sycophants that people the political landscape of Canada. I think it was Bernie Sanders, (who just might be a good president some day, (me and Phil Donahue both like him)), who said recently that no governmental decisions can be made in the U.S. without corporate approval. Same in Canada.
It's an interesting situation. This article is a pretty concise explanation. This whole mess that America is in started with the 14th amendment to the American Constitution. Not even! Just a note written by a court reporter, a former corporate leader, (railroad president), who took it upon himself to write an addendum to a case that was being tried to decide on proper taxation of the Southern Pacific Railroad. He wrote that the court had decided that corporations are people under the 14th amendment. In actuality the supreme court had ruled only that the state that charters a corporation has the right to tax it. They didn't actually make a ruling on the peoplehood prefix at all. So it did not constitute a law, but it became a matter of legal record and was subsequently used as precedence. The 14th amendment was mostly to ensure that recently freed, (by the 13th amendment), slaves would have the same rights as eveyone else in America. The corporations have fiendishly used it to usurp undeserved rights and freedoms that have significantly added to their power. That's how the American people got, ahem, railroaded into the state of corporate oligarchy that exists now.
I guess I'm interested to see if politics in Indonesia are as much a case of Mammon worship as in North America or not. As the man says, "May you live in interesting times." Things are getting quite interesting. Here in Indonesia it's a two horse race between Prabowo Subianto and Joko Widodo, nicknamed Jokowi. Election day came and went and as near as anyone can tell right now the election was a tie. Early indications show that Jokowi was the winner, but anything can happen. In North America we all know that the person who loses the election, or is found to have cheated can still be the leader of a country. We all know what happened with Bush but a lot of people don't know about Harper's election shenanigans in Canada. He cheated in 2006 to first become PM. He spent more than allowed on advertising. Not such a bad sin but still against the rules. But then in 2011 he won with 39% of the vote. That's right 61% of Canadians had had enough of him by then. But there's more. There were these mysterious automated phone calls that directed voters to the wrong polling stations. This lead to an investigation into Canadian voting procedures and the conclusion that there were rampant procedural errors made by polling officials. The election is still disputed but we kept Harper anyway. So what do you do if you're Harper? A couple years later you cut the election watchdog's budget by 8% to make sure that this MAY happen again. That's the office whose job it is to straighten out rampant procedural errors. Sounds a lot like the rampant procedural errors in Florida, (governed by Jeb Bush), during the 2000 election in the States doesn't it?
Right now it looks very much as though something like this could happen here in Indonesia. Here is quite a scary article that shows quite clearly what I'm talking about. Quick counts after the July 9th election all favour Jokowi. All the legitimate ones that is. But according to the article there are some quick count agencies, known for innaccuracies in the past, who have claimed Prabowo won the narrowest of victories.
Now watch this: where a BBC reporter reads the stats to Prabowo and he says, "No no no no. It is completely the other way around." He says the sources cited are partisan in favour of Jokowi and not to be trusted. Part of a "grand design to manipulate perception." And then the statement that gave me a chill, "Let us rely on the legal institutions of Indonesia." This looks a lot like the tried and tested political manouvre, (or manure however you spell that word...), that I like to call the "I know you are but what am I" ploy. Recognize that you suck, pinpoint your shortcomings, then accuse the opposition of exactly those problems. What I'm saying, and what the previous article is saying, is that perhaps Prabowo, not Jokowi, is guilty of grand designs to manipulate perception in Indonesia. Probowo calls Jokowi a "product of a PR campaign" and a "tool of the oligarchs." I have a feeling I know which candidate is the bigger TOOL here. As for the PR campaign I read an article written by an Indonesian who can understand the speeches he gives in Indonesian and that writer characterized them as hyper-patriotic, jingoistic rabble rousing in which he has made flamboyant entrances on horseback and spectacular exits via the stage dive. He also says that the Jokowi supporters are the violent ones and HE, the former Lieutenant General in the military, is preaching peace. And I just LOVED his response when asked what he will do if he loses. "WHAT?" He has been quoted as saying, "Losing is not an option." That worries me. And in a more famous quote from 1998, the year of Suharto's fall, when the riots were happening and he allegedly ordered kidnapping and torture, he said he was willing "to drive all the Chinese out of the country even if that sets the economy back twenty or thirty years." Maybe this is what he means when he says in the interview that he is fighting for a "clean" Indonesia.
In evasive answer to the reporter's question about allegations of human rights violations he committed in 1998 during the Suharto regime in Indonesia, he states that he leads a coalition that is comprised of two thirds of the voters in Indonesia. How could they be so stupid to support me? Not even a minute later he mentions that Indonesians have been considered a stupid, lazy people. Then he evades the second request for him to unequivocally comment on human rights violations he has been accused of and he uses another political tactic. I HAVE! Many, many, many, many times. Check the record. This means I may or may not have actually answered this question in the past, but I'm not going to answer this question NOW. The statement about relying on the legal institutions of Indonesia is chilling because I have been here only a few months and have already had plenty of first hand experience with what the whole world knows about Indonesia's legal institutions: they are corrupt. A long lasting remnant of the Suharto government to which Prabowo has strong ties.
He was a high ranking, very important military officer in Suharto's Indonesia. He actually married Suharto's daughter though they are now divorced. I recently read a rumour that Titiek Suharto will get back together with him if he wins the election because a traditional muslim country prefers a married president. But apparently this was just a rumour. Couldn't have hurt him in the minds of the incredulously fond reminiscers of the Suharto era. Who vote, by the way. Just read the article. An estimated 73 billion bucks of Indonesia's money passed through the Suharto family's hands. Suharto killed an estimated half million rivals to his "presidency." Who knows how many he imprisoned? Prabowo and Titiek are still incredibly wealthy today because of the Suharto years of violence and corruption. Yet still today there are many who speak of Suharto in almost god-like terms.
After Suharto stepped down, Prabowo demanded that his successor, Habibie, put him in charge of the army. Instead, Habibie demoted him. Furious, Probowo stormed into the Presidential Palace with a sidearm and some military trucks. He was blocked, but it's no secret what he was about to do. When he says in this article that his family has always "served the country, served the people, served the society" it is mind blowing that any of the country, people, society of Indonesia can take that seriously let alone a MAJORITY of them! Read the article, please. The death of two of his uncles on the same day in '46 during the war of independance against the Dutch inspired Prabowo's military career. Sounds more inspiring before you figure that this was 5 years before he was born. He never knew those uncles. Racial slurs endured as the only Asian in class while studying in Switzerland, the U.K. and Hong Kong? First of all, boo hoo. Studying in Switzerland, U.K. and Hong Kong. Poor fella. Secondly the Swiss and the English are not the first nationalities that would come to mind if I were pondering anti-Asian sentiment by country. And thirdly, I doubt very much he was the only Asian in a class in Hong Kong or he was subjected to racial slurs there for being Asian. Here's a theory and there's really no way of knowing, but maybe, just maybe he was a child of privelege with a PERSONALITY that people didn't like, not a race. He has a notorious temper and as the article says he thought of his teachers as stupid.
Here we are back at that word again: stupid. Prabowo is fond of furthering the myth that people think Indonesians are stupid monkeys. Where did he get this from? One of my fellow expats here posted this article on facebook today. As you read that article did you think for an instant, "Okay, a power tripping soldier uses his uniform and position to extort less than five bucks from a guy who is parking at the prime cultural site in all of Jakarta ostensibly to absorb some culture. The guy won't pay so the soldier goes through the unthinkable process of dousing him with gasoline, (for all we know more than 5 bucks worth), lights the guy on fire and for doing so COULD serve jail time! That must be a perfect example of how all 237 million Indonesians think. They are all stupid monkeys." I hope you didn't. Because THAT would be stupid.
But Probowo seems to think that there is a perception of Indonesians as stupid, lazy monkeys. Another theory here: given the life this guy has lived, the corruption he has benefitted from, the harm he has already brought to Indonesia, and the fact that he fully expects to win this election, this may be another one of those "I know you are but what am I" situations. Not that HE is a stupid, lazy monkey, but that he may be the one who views Indonesians in this way. In fact he may be depending upon it.
I think if he somehow becomes president it will almost certainly be through unscrupulous means. I wonder if his tactics will resemble the North American election thefts or if he'll just storm the Presidential Palace again. I doubt he'll reunite with his ex wife but there is a real danger in Indonesia that the Suharto regime will be renewed along with the corruption, government enrichment and citizen impoverishment characteristic of it. I don't know much about Jokowi but it seems to me there's nowhere to go but up from here.
Am I wrong?
Addendum: Today is July 23. The official count is in and it's Jokowi with 53% of the votes so the reputable quick count agencies were, once again, right on the money. Prabowo is, of course, challenging the voting process as "unfair" as he said he wouldn't in the BBC interview. I suppose the very fair process of demanding a political position and if refused assassinating the refuser, (like Prabowo attempted to do with Habibie) is preferable. Incidentally, the link I used with the quick count stats showed up on my compose blog screen properly but on the blog site when I clicked on the link it went to the wrong page. I just changed it and hope it works so you can see the accuracy of the quick count agencies Prabowo said were partisan and tools of the oligarchs. The agency that had him with 60% of the vote is now being violently silenced by members of the Jokowi camp I guess. Indonesia dodged a bullet here. I have little doubt that Prabowo would have been a terrible president. It will be interesting to see how long it takes Jokowi to be corrupted. I'm a complete cynic when it comes to politics. Oscar Wylde said about cynics, "A cynic knows the price of everything but the value of nothing." I can't find much, if any, value in politicians but I DO see the price the whole world has paid for this elitist sport. I'll probably go back now to pretending I'm ignoring it.
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