News & issues

Public services bill urgent

Jakarta Post - January 24, 2008

Desy Nurhayati, Jakarta – A group of NGOs has urged the House of Representatives to revise and immediately pass into law a public services bill to guarantee citizens' rights to adequate and accessible public services.

The Public Services Monitoring Community told a seminar here Wednesday the bill had yet to guarantee the services would accommodate basic rights and be accessible for vulnerable groups, including women, senior citizens, the disabled and the poor.

"The public has been deprived by the state's failure to provide appropriate public services," said group member Herni Sri Nurbayanti.

"The government's obligation is not only in providing good services but also in ensuring all people are able to use the services," she added.

She said the bill, proposed by the ministry of state administrative reform to the House in 2005, still had many flaws and would not be able to improve the poor state of public services in the country.

The group has drafted its own version of the bill, which contains several stipulations not found in the government's version, to be proposed to the House's Commission II overseeing state bodies.

The group's draft includes creating special services for vulnerable groups, a clear mechanism for filing complaints and sanctions on state officials and citizens found in violation of the regulations.

Other additions include the formation of an independent body with the authority to accept complaints and settle disputes relating to public services.

The group recommended that sanctions imposed on violators not be merely administrative sanctions, but also criminal and civil punishments.

The group also demanded the government allow more opportunities for the private sector to participate in providing public services.

Commission II member Sayuti Asyatri said the House would soon continue deliberation of the bill, but did not mention a deadline for passing it into law.

In 2006, the year after the bill was proposed, the House did not discuss the bill at all. It continued deliberating the bill last year.

"We expect the deliberation will soon be completed because this bill has long been awaited and stuck at the House. Besides, Commission II still has other matters on its agenda, especially in connection with the 2009 general election," Sayuti said.

He said he would propose to the Commission II the NGO's version of the bill and ensure there would be no articles in the bill that could give rise to misinterpretation.

Deputy of the ministry's public services department Cerdas Kaban said in the seminar that public services in some regencies were far better than in the country's capital because the regional administrations were more committed to serving the public.

He cited the Jembrana regency in Bali and Sragen regency in Central Java as examples of best practices in public services.

Indonesia near the bottom in SE Asia clean-toilet survey

Jakarta Post - January 23, 2008

Jakarta – Nearly all of Indonesia's 220 million citizens lack access to proper sanitation, an official at the Public Works Ministry said Tuesday.

The director general for Housing, Building and Planning, Budi Yuwono, said 76.15 percent of the total population already had access to basic sanitation, such as toilets, but only 2.21 percent had access to proper sanitation with sewage and wastewater treatment.

"Compared to other Southeast Asian countries, Indonesia ranks sixth in terms of sanitation services, with only 69 percent of the urban population and 46 percent of the rural population receiving adequate services," Yuwono told a discussion organized by USAID's Environmental Services Program (ESP).

He quoted 2005 data from the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) that ranked Indonesia below Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Myanmar, and above only Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in sanitation infrastructure.

Bappenas director for Settlement and Housing Budi Hidayat said Indonesia produced 6.4 million tons of human waste per year, and around 30 percent of it was neither collected well nor processed.

ESP reported that in urban areas, 35 percent of toilets channeled human waste directly into rivers instead of into septic tanks, while 70 percent of groundwater had been contaminated with fecal bacteria.

The poor sanitation, said Hidayat, caused potential economic losses of US$6.34 million and led to the deaths of 100,000 children under the age of five every year.

Tjatur Saptoedy, a member of the House of Representatives' Commission VII on environmental affairs, said such conditions were a result of the government's lack of commitment to improving sanitation infrastructure.

"The sanitation sector received only Rp 500 billion (US$52.88 million) of the total Rp 36.1 trillion the government allocated for infrastructure development in 2008," he said.

He said the government allocated around Rp 7.7 trillion for the sanitation sector over the past 30 years, a number that worked out to Rp 200 per citizen per year. The minimal budget needed to provide adequate sanitation facilities, he said, is Rp 47,000 per head per year.

Yuwono said providing proper sanitation was not only the central government's responsibility, but that local administrations, too, played important roles.

However, he said the regions' commitments to improving sanitation in their areas was even poorer, with most allocating less than 2 percent of regional budgets to the sector.

"Some regions, like Surakarta (Central Java), Bontang (East Kalimantan) and Pontianak (West Kalimantan), are very committed to improving their sanitation, but others need continuous urging," said Yuwono.

Erna Witoelar, former UN Millennium Development Goals Ambassador to Indonesia, said efforts to improve the country's sanitation conditions should also involve communities, whose negligence had worsened problems.

"Communities must continuously urge the government to improve sanitation, besides taking part in improvement efforts themselves," she said. Tjatur added that "large-scale efforts are needed to build awareness in communities".

Indonesia is not the only country facing sanitation problems. The UN Development Program's 2006 Human Development Report revealed that almost half the people living in developing countries lack access to proper sanitation. The UN has declared 2008 the International Year of Sanitation. (wda)

The politics of food security

Jakarta Post - January 22, 2008

The way the Indonesian government reacted to the steep soybean price hike last week was similar to the pathetic manner in which it tried to address the sky-high oil price rises.

When international oil prices hit US$100/barrel for several days last month, the government announced after a cabinet session a set of contingency measures to maintain fiscal sustainability. However, none of the measures were designed to cut wasteful fuel use and slash fuel subsidies. A plan to stop subsidized gasoline sales to private car owners was immediately abandoned as soon as the oil prices were again down to below $100.

Private cars continue to burn billions of dollars in taxpayers' money, in traffic jams in Jakarta and other major cities.

And the country, as a net oil importer, remains highly vulnerable to the wildly volatile oil prices. So fasten your seat belt for another turbulence of tremendous inflationary pressures as most analysts have predicted that oil prices will not likely go down again below $80.

Likewise, when tempeh producers went on strike last week in protest against the doubling of the price of soybean – the basic material for the fermented soy-cake and tofu – the government convened a special cabinet session to address that soybean debacle. But again the measures announced to cope with the problem consisted only an ad hoc measure to lift the 10 percent import duty on soybean and a greatly doubtful plan to expand soybean crop acreage to more than 700,000 hectares this year from around 598,000 ha last year.

These measures would most likely be futile to plug the domestic soybean deficit which now amounts to two thirds of national consumption. Any plan to increase the output of soybean and other food commodities is simply not realistic without any concrete program to ensure fair prices for the farmers.

The problem, though, is it is rather impossible to guarantee fair prices for producers of soybean and other food commodities if they remain entirely at the mercy of global market fluctuation.

The steady decrease in soybean acreage from 1.6 million ha in 1992 to 621,000 ha in 2005 and 456,000 ha in 2005 should be blamed largely on cheap soybeans dumped by American producers on the domestic market.

But when international soybean prices began to rise in early 2007 due mainly to the biofuel craze in the US, many Indonesian farmers, traumatized by their previous losses, continued to stay away from soybeans, thereby increasing our dependence on imports.

A similar trend has been taking place in food commodities since 2006, but especially since January 2007 when the US stepped up its energy diversification into biofuel with the support of huge fiscal subsidies.

The most remarkable change in food markets since late 2006 is that sky-high food prices have been taking place amid abundance, not at a time of scarcity caused by crop failure. That means the steep price hikes have been driven mostly by demand.

Wheat, soybean and palm oil prices have doubled last year alone, maize by more than 50 percent and rice by almost 20 percent, while sugar gained the lowest price hike of less than 5 percent. The problem is that we depend on imports for almost 12 percent of our maize need. Our import dependence for soybean is 70 percent, for sugar almost 38 percent and for beef 30 percent.

Indonesia has especially been more vulnerable to food price hikes because almost 50 percent of its population live on less than US$2 a day and poor households, on average, spend more than 75 percent of their income on food alone.

The devastating impact of these food price rises further increase, because more than 70 percent of our animal and poultry feed is derived from corn and soymeal.

One factor behind the surge in the demand for food is the increasing wealth among the 2.5 billion people in India and China which has stoked demand for meat, which, in turn, boosted the demand for cereals to feed livestock.

The biggest factor certainly is the big expansion of ethanol production in the US where farmers, eager to take advantage of the subsidies, converted their crops from soybean and wheat to maize.

Analysts estimate the demand of the US subsidized ethanol program alone accounts for over half the world's unmet need for cereals.

The clearest message of this trend is that, like oil, the era of cheap food has ended. Saddening though is that we depend heavily on imports for most food commodities and oil fuel.

Food security is impossible without adequate protection of the farmers from the international price fluctuations and this in turn requires a political consensus to allocate adequate funds for the building and management of strategic food reserves by the State Logistics Agency.

It is this such political commitment that has enabled governments in developed countries to allocate huge sums of taxpayers' money to support their farmers. It is also a similar commitment to pro-poor growth that enabled the Soeharto administration to stabilize the prices of main food commodities.

'Decentralization breeds local kings'

Jakarta Post - January 19, 2008

Jakarta – Political experts concluded during a book discussion Friday the awkward transition from authoritarianism to democracy in post-Soeharto Indonesia resulted in the birth of "local kings" instead of local managers.

"Decentralization revived old political structures that probably were and are anti-democratic in nature. The awkward transition created a phenomenon of free-floating elites," political observer Daniel Sparringa said at the launch of Politik Lokal di Indonesia.

The book was translated from its English version "Renegotiating Boundaries: Local Politics in Post-Soeharto Indonesia", by Bernard Hidayat. It is a compilation of the results of a two-year research on political practices in Indonesian regions, which was conducted by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV).

Daniel said the politics of identity, described in chapters of the book as "widely developing", posed a serious threat to democracy.

"The act of manipulating identities for political purposes is misleading and dangerous because it results in worrying fragmentations," he warned. Regional governments were developing local colors in a communal, sectarian and primordial way, and "not quite the way we wanted it", he added.

Another political observer and researcher, Daniel Dakidae, said the repression of indigenous groups in Indonesia during the Soeharto regime created the underlying driving force of the fragmentations.

"In the past, the government handled indigenous groups (with the use of) violence. The desire to be in power has long been present among (indigenous groups), but repression kept it unexpressed," he said.

Henk Schulte Nordholt, the editor of the book, said contrary to international views, common Indonesian people were more politically aware and active.

"They had to be, because they are now involved in the regional elections, which means they can't escape from being politically aware," he said.

Nordholt cited a comparison between Indonesians and Americans, saying more Indonesians exercised their right to vote, resulting in the appointment of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, whom he said was a better choice than George W. Bush.

Unfortunately, he said, this political awareness and involvement is not balanced by similar positive improvements among the leaders of the political parties in the regions.

Henk referred to an example from Banten, where established jawaras (local leaders of the economy) expanded their networks and resolved into politics after investing in the economic sector.

"These economic leaders were prominent figures in sponsoring the expensive cost of politicians in the region. They were controlling the government then, and they're controlling the government now," he said. (lva)

'Prosperity the goal, not democracy'

Jakarta Post - January 17, 2008

Jakarta – Vice President Jusuf Kalla and academics debated the relationship between democracy and the economy, with Kalla saying prosperity, not democracy, should be the country's ultimate goal.

"We have to enforce democracy because that is the consensus in the country, with the aim of improving people's welfare," the Vice President said during a seminar organized by the Indonesian Journalists Union to mark the group's third anniversary here Tuesday.

Kalla said, however, that democracy was only a tool, not the goal. "We do not necessarily have to follow the United States, which glorifies democracy as an objective. America has reached a level of prosperity that allows it to focus on promoting democracy," he said.

Indonesia, he said, still has much work to do in improving the living standards of all citizens.

Dubbed the world's third largest democracy, Indonesia is still plagued by poverty, with 16.6 percent of the country's people living below the poverty line, according to official data.

During former president Soeharto's authoritarian New Order regime, which came to an end in 1998, Indonesia was touted as an Asian economic miracle due to its high growth rates.

Another speaker at the seminar, Azyumardi Azra of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, said democracy was the best political system for the country, even though it had yet to generate prosperity for all.

"Although democracy has several weaknesses, compared to other political systems, such as religious-based systems, it is the best for our country," said Azyumardi, who is also deputy secretary to Kalla.

Azyumardi said, however, that democracy as so far practiced in Indonesia had been hugely expensive. He said large amounts of money had been spent on political campaigns and infrastructure for general elections, in addition to the cash used "to buy votes or support".

Franz Magnis-Suseno, a professor at the Driyarkara School of Philosophy, told the seminar it would take a long time for Indonesia to "harvest" the rewards of democracy. "We have to make democracy a culture, while it apparently still remains a system so far. And the process may take a long time," said Magnis.

National Mandate Party politician Dradjad Wibowo said democracy in the country had so far been a failure, as it had not allowed for the equal distribution of economic resources.

"Our economic condition is no different from conditions before the start of the 1998 reform movement," Dradjad, an economist, told the seminar.

He said economic resources continued to be controlled by a small group of people. "I can say that we still have the same structure, only the people benefiting from that structure have changed," he said.

"We used to know that Om Liem (business tycoon Sudono Salim) was the richest man in the country. Now, we have Aburizal Bakrie," he said. Aburizal, the coordinating minister for the people's welfare, was named by a magazine as the richest man in the country last year.

Salim, who left Indonesia following the 1998 reform movement, was closely connected with the regime of former president Soeharto. Dradjad said people could not simply rely on democracy to improve their lives economically, but needed a government in place that was able to adopt the necessary economic policies.

"The government must be able to adopt economic policies that will close the gap between the poor and the rich," he said. (lln)

Demos, actions, protests...

Seven protest actions to colour the capital today

Tempo Interactive - January 24, 2008

Ibnu Rusydi/TMC, Jakarta – Protest actions will colour the capital city on Thursday January 24. The Metro Jaya regional police intelligence and security directorate has received notification of seven planned demonstrations.

As announced by the Metro Jaya Traffic Management Center, the first action will be held by workers from PT Tunggal Maju Asri on Jl. Arya Kemuning Periuk in Tangerang. Starting at around 8am. Some 150 people will take part in the action.

At 9am, a group named the Riau Pro-democracy Social Community (KMRPD) will hold a protest action in front of the State Palace in Central Jakarta.

Also on Jl. Jalan Medan Merdeka Utara, the North Maluku Indonesian Forum (FIMU) will be demonstrating at the Supreme Court building. Around 300 people will participate in action that will take place between 9am and 3pm.

Around 200 people from the Jakarta Residents Forum (FAKTA) will hold a protest action in front of the State Palace between 11am to 4pm. Also at 11am, 200 or so people from the Social Movement to Safeguard the People's Money (GEMPUR) will be demonstrating in front of the House of Representatives building in Senayan.

The Kutai Kartanegara Social Fraternity Communication Forum (FKPMKK) will be holding a protest action at the Supreme Court and the Attorney General's Office. Starting at 11am, around 50 people will take part in the action.

Between 4-5pm, around 50 people from the Solidarity Network for the Families of Victims of Human Rights Violations (JSKKPH) will demonstrate in front of the State Palace. The group, wearing black clothing, has been holding peaceful actions at the State Palace on the last Thursday of each month.

[Translated by James Balowski.]

Massive political rally cripples activities in Makassar

Jakarta Post - January 19, 2008

Andi Hajramurni, Makassar – Rallies for the South Sulawesi gubernatorial pair candidates Syahrul Yasin Limpo and Agus Arifin Nu'mang intensified a day prior to the official inauguration scheduled for Saturday.

Thousands of people took to the streets to demand the central government swear in the pair to replace incumbent Governor Amin Syam, whose term ended Friday.

In the recent gubernatorial election the pair garnered 1.43 million votes to Amin's 1.4 million, leading the province chapter of the General Elections Commission to declare Syahrul and Agus the winners.

On Dec. 19 last year, however, the Supreme Court ordered a repeat election due to 8,000 illegal votes. It called for new elections in four regencies to take place within three to four months. Protesters called the Supreme Court ruling contradictory to the law and a waste of funds. They also rejected the government's plans to appoint an interim governor until new elections could be held, warning that if the government failed to install Syahrul and Agus on Saturday, they would swear in the pair according to South Sulawesi traditions.

Crowds arriving from around South Sulawesi held protests in a number of places, including the gubernatorial office, the legislative council and Bank Indonesia buildings. Police barricaded entrances to the legislative building and gubernatorial office with barbed wire to prevent protesters from storming the buildings.

Protesters blocked the road and burned tires in front of the legislative building and the governor's official residence.

They also blocked the border road between Gowa and Makassar, with burning tires causing congestion and forcing traffic detours.

A clash at one point ensued at the Bank Indonesia building when someone tossed rocks at the crowd from behind the fence at Karebosi Square. The angry crowd tried to find the perpetrator, but quick action from security forces prevented the situation from becoming unruly.

When the bank manager failed to appear before the crowd, protesters entered the building and banged on the doors. The incident did not last long since protest coordinators were able to appease the crowd, and they left the office soon thereafter.

The rally lasted into the late afternoon and left many shopping centers deserted, especially in the Chinatown areas of Jl. Somba Opu, Jl. Sulawesi and Jl. Dr. Sam Ratulangi.

Office activities, especially at government agencies, were disrupted because some civil servants took part in the rally.

Meanwhile, in Jakarta, Vice President Jusuf Kalla insisted the government would install Harus Saruns Dayeng, a senior official at the Home Ministry, as interim governor until the province could hold its repeat election.

Amin Syam's official defeat in the gubernatorial election was seen as a slap in the face for the Golkar Party, as the province had been known for its strong support of the party.

The General Election Commission has yet to set a schedule for a repeat election in the four regencies.

Be on the look out for demonstrations and political rallies today

Detik.com - January 21, 2008

Fitraya Ramadhanny, Jakarta – The start of the working week in Jakarta will be enlivened by a number of protest actions and internal events by various political parties. The mass of supporters that they bring along could create traffic jams. Where exactly?

According to information from the Metro Jaya regional police traffic directorate for Monday January 21, at 8am the United National Indigenous Party (PNPB) will hold a declaration at the Juang 45 building on Jl. Menteng Raya in Central Jakarta. The IBL National BasketBall Competition will also be held at the Bung Karno Sports Stadium in Jakarta.

At 9am there will be two protest actions. The first will be in front of the House of Representatives (DPR) building on Jl. Gatot Subroto organised by the Student and Youth Alliance for Lampung and Indonesia (AMPLI). Traffic in the direction of Slipi will be slightly disrupted.

A protest action will also be held at the National Land Agency offices on Jl. Sisimangaraja in South Jakarta. The action is being organised by Tribal Committee for the Advance of the Hamba Radja ethnic group from the Rokan Hilir regency in Riau.

Also at 9am, the National Integrationist Party (PPB) will be holding a National Leadership Meeting at the Haji public building on Jl. Jaksa in Central Jakarta while the Indonesian Diversity Party (PBI) will a National Congress at the Mitra Bahari Apartments on Jl. Pakin Raya in the Penjaringan area of North Jakarta.

Following the demonstration by Lampung students and youths, at 12noon the DPR will be greeted by demonstration by the Social Movement to Safeguard the People's Money (GEMPUR).

At 1pm meanwhile, Indonesian National Student Solidarity (SMNI) will be holding an action at the Hotel Indonesia roundabout in Central Jakarta. (fay/aba)

[Translated by James Balowski.]

Death of a dictator

Soeharto coverage comes under fire

Jakarta Post - January 24, 2008

Jakarta – The uniformity of media reports on Soeharto's hospitalization and his health condition has raised suspicions that the coverage is aimed at motivating sympathy for the former president.

According to Heru Hendratmoko of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), there are indications that the former strongman's 32-year legacy of rampant corruption and human rights violations are being glossed over by the constant and comprehensive reports of his deteriorating health, which allegedly have been framed to stir up sympathy.

"There is a massive impunity movement among politicians and legislators who are encouraging the public at large to forgive the wrongdoings of the ailing former president and his cronies, a matter that has yet to receive official scrutiny and undergo any legal process," Heru told a media gathering at the AJI headquarters in Central Jakarta on Wednesday.

News of the retired five-star army general's failing health has filled the daily headlines of many newspapers and television channels since he was admitted at Pertamina Hospital in South Jakarta on Jan. 4 due to a low heart rate and severe edema.

"News reportage on Soeharto's health has monopolized the papers and television, overshadowing other equally, if not more, important issues such as the soybean crisis and floods in Java, which is a worrying trend," Heru added.

Even though such coverage may have been a natural human response, media observer Arya Gunawan said, media workers should remain impartial and be able to differentiate between Soeharto's health and the charges of corruption and human rights violations brought against him.

"Soeharto's health has become the center of a media circus, whereas human interest should have been kept separate from legal matters," Arya said, adding that the biased reporting of Soeharto had shaped the way his teenage son perceived the ailing octogenarian.

"We had heated discussions during which he would be dismissive of Soeharto's bleak record due to his ill-health. It was such hard work talking my son back to his senses," he said.

Heru and Arya had earlier argued that the images of Soeharto's deteriorating physical state broadcasted by television were detrimental in shaping the people's perceptions.

"There is a possibility that major media players have bought into the plot which has generated the support Soeharto now has. A gap exists between significant events and reportage," Arya said, adding that further investigation, particularly in tracing media ownership, could either help confirm or debunk the conspiracy theory.

Veteran journalist and member of the Soetomo Press Institute Atmakusumah Astraatmadja, however, argued that no conspiracy existed.

"I don't agree with the assumption that there is a deliberate framing of Soeharto-related reportage. Nor do I think media reports of his ill health have taken over the headlines. Perhaps readers only read what they want to read," said Atmakusumah, who had also argued that the extent and depth of reporting on Soeharto were healthy manifestations of the freedom of the press.

Soeharto has now been in hospital for 20 days, with his doctors announcing Wednesday that his health had taken another turn for the worse. He is recovering from multiple organ failure and remains in a critical condition. (amr)

Pardon Soeharto, urges PKS chief

Jakarta Post - January 22, 2008

Jakarta – Politicians are stepping up their attempts to spare former president Soeharto from sitting trial for corruption and human rights crime allegations dating back to his 32 years in power.

The Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), known for an anti-corruption campaign that has helped it join the ranks of the country's major political players, announced Monday that it was officially requesting Indonesia forgive the former dictator for the sake of national reconciliation.

"For the PKS the substance of the initiative is reconciliation that will free this nation from past burdens which otherwise will disrupt its passage to a better future," Mahfudz Siddik, chairman of the party's faction at the House Representatives, told a press conference. The party says that Soeharto, regardless of his mistakes, is one of the country's great leaders.

The formal request will be sent to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Vice President Jusuf Kalla, People's Consultative Assembly Speaker Hidayat Nurwahid, House Speaker Agung Laksono, Regional Representatives Council Speaker Ginanjar Kartasasmita, Chief Justice Bagir Manan, Constitutional Court President Jimly Asshidiqie and leaders of factions at the House.

The move follows a recommendation from the PKS board of patrons that appealed to the President to pardon Soeharto, who has been in a critical condition at Pertamina Hospital for almost three weeks.

The PKS followed in the footsteps of the Golkar Party, in which Soeharto was once a powerful figure, which has demanded suspension of all legal processes against the 86-year-old.

Unlike Golkar, however, the PKS insists that the court settlement of Soeharto's cases continue.

Soeharto's family recently asked for an out-of-court settlement of a civil lawsuit filed by the government against foundations set up by the former president. The government is demanding Rp 4 trillion in compensation for state money that was sent to the foundations.

President Yudhoyono has called for the nation to avoid debating legal affairs related to Soeharto now that the retired five-star Army general is in hospital. Soeharto has survived two close brushes with death since he was rushed to the hospital on Jan. 4.

The government has also refused to respond to calls for mercy for Soeharto as there has been no court verdict declaring him guilty. The attorney general has dropped corruption charges leveled at Soeharto, citing his inability to stand trial.

Mahfudz said an out-of-court settlement would only lead to back- room deals. "We do not take a priori judgment, but everybody knows we are preparing for general elections in 2009," he said.

Human rights activists and victims of violence during Soeharto's rule, however, are pushing for a trial. They said Monday that past crimes perpetrated by the Soeharto administration were "unforgivable".

"Let's pray for Pak Harto's recovery, so that he can stand trial," labor activist Mukhtar Pakpahan, who once was detained for insulting the president during the New Order regime, told a media conference held just 100 meters from Pertamina Hospital.

The health of Soeharto has suffered a slight setback, with his doctors saying Monday that the 86-year-old former dictator's digestive system is not functioning properly. Soeharto rallied at the end of last week, but remains in a critical condition.

The head of Soeharto's team of doctors, Mardjo Soebiandono, told journalists that digestive problems emerged Sunday. "(Soeharto's) general condition is showing regression again... yesterday (Sunday) afternoon, he developed problems with his digestive system," Mardjo was quoted by AFP.

Suharto: In praise of a dictator

Melbourne Age - January 20, 2008

"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." - George Orwell

Tom Hyland – In late 1965 and early 1966, the rivers in Java and Bali ran red. Indonesian farmers and fishermen complained canals were clogged with corpses that had been shot, hacked by farm hoes, mutilated with machetes.

Since the victims were assumed to be communists, the killings were greeted as good news in Western capitals, Canberra in particular. The Cold War was at its height, and Australians feared a red tide of communism would topple the dominoes of South-East Asia, seeping relentlessly to our northern shores.

Estimates of the toll in what the CIA described as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century range from 500,000 to 1 million. But the horror of what was happening was softened with language emasculated by euphemism.

The bloodshed was welcomed for ushering in an era of stability in Indonesia under a pro-Western government led by a firm anti- communist, Major-General Soeharto, who pushed aside the adventurist president Sukarno. (He had flirted with the Indonesian Communist Party and waged a quasi-war with Malaysia in which Australian troops fought and died.)

In July 1966, Australia's then prime minister Harold Holt tried to make murder respectable by declaring: "With 500,000 to 1 million communist sympathisers knocked off... I think it is safe to assume a reorientation has taken place."

Holt's comment became a template for weasel words from Australian prime ministers in the three decades that Soeharto ruled our largest neighbour.

From 1965 until he fell from power in 1998, powerful figures in Australian politics, and in diplomacy, academia and the media, defended Soeharto with language and arguments they claimed were based on realism, but which ignored, denied or white-washed the ugly truth.

Their language said little about Indonesian reality. Even while they claimed to be pro-Indonesian, they expressed little sympathy for ordinary Indonesians. Instead, their words revealed much about Australian fear, pessimism, wishful-thinking and opportunism.

Holt's endorsement echoed in the words of a succession of prime ministers, who went beyond the bounds of diplomatic nicety to praise a dictator. The word "fawning" comes to mind.

In 1996, John Howard reminded an official banquet in Jakarta that it was a coalition government that had first "welcomed the stability" brought by Soeharto, a "very skilled and sensitive national leader" who had held his country together.

Two years later, when the facade of Soeharto's solidity collapsed and he was forced to resign by the winds of economic crisis and mass protests, Howard again praised Soeharto for bringing "enormous stability" to Indonesia. As for his methods and the wisdom of some of his policies, well, "as with any person", that was for history to judge.

Obsequious double-speak was not unique to Howard's side of politics. Bob Hawke's speech at a presidential banquet in Jakarta in 1983 was particularly cringe-worthy.

He praised Soeharto as one of the "most respected heads of state ... in the world", who had guided Indonesia's progress since being "called to the leadership".

The man who waded to power through rivers of blood and cemented his control with a complex system of repression, co-option and persuasion had set his hand "to the tremendous task of national reconciliation", winning "an imperishable place" in Indonesian history.

Hawke capped his speech, which years later was remembered with embarrassment even by Australian diplomats and loyal Indonesian officials, with a toast to Soeharto and the declaration: "Your people love you, Mr President."

Paul Keating took the relationship with Soeharto to new levels of intimacy, built on the courtship of his predecessors. Visiting Jakarta in 1992, he lauded Soeharto's success in maintaining the unity and stability of Indonesia as "one of the most significant and beneficial events" in Australia's strategic history.

By 1994, Keating had elevated the Soeharto regime's importance to "the single most beneficial strategic development to have affected Australia and its region in the past 30 years".

Ignored in all this was Soeharto's appalling record and the insatiable greed of his family, which, according to the anti- corruption group Transparency International, embezzled up to $US35 billion ($A39.7 billion).

The killings of 1965-1966 may have been the worst of his crimes, but they weren't the only ones.

Tens of thousands of alleged communist sympathisers and intellectuals were held for years without trial on remote Buru Island, Soeharto's own gulag.

Massacres recurred throughout his rule. In 1984, soldiers shot dead hundreds of protesters in Tanjung Priok, the port of Jakarta. In the mid-1980s, soldiers shot and garotted thousands of suspected criminals, leaving their bodies on the streets in what Soeharto later admitted was an act of "shock therapy".

To maintain national unity, thousands were killed in Aceh and West Papua. Then there was East Timor, where up to 180,000 died as a result of the invasion and subjugation ordered by Soeharto.

To maintain a dubious stability, universities were silenced, the press muzzled, the parliament neutered. The courts were a joke. Trade unionists and human rights activists were abducted, tortured, raped and murdered.

Implicit in the language of Australia's leaders was the assumption that Indonesians were culturally unsuited to democracy, inherently violent, and needed a firm hand, without which their country would disintegrate, a fracturing that would threaten Australia.

This official obsequiousness betrayed deep national insecurity, fear and suspicion, even as our leaders claimed to be building good relations with an important neighbour. Are we any closer to Indonesia, and less suspicious of Indonesians, as a result?

Indonesians will judge Soeharto's place in history. But we can judge the record of our leaders in their relationship with him.

Soeharto was a mass murderer and a kleptomaniac. Just don't expect Kevin Rudd to say it.

[Tom Hyland is The Sunday Age's international editor.]

Protests, police at Suharto's hospital

Reuters - January 19, 2008

Telly Nathalia, Jakarta – Indonesian anti-riot police briefly clashed with about 100 demonstrators on Saturday as they called for former Indonesian president Suharto to be brought to justice.

Students and human rights activists gathered outside the Jakarta hospital where the 86-year-old Suharto is being treated, but police barred them from entering, and were later joined by anti- riot police wearing shields and helmets.

A Reuters reporter saw police briefly hitting demonstrators. One student was arrested.

The former strongman, who is critically ill in hospital, ruled Indonesia with an iron fist for 32 years and has never been brought to trial for human rights abuses that occurred while he was in power.

Attempts by the state to recover money from Suharto and his family are taking years to wend their way through the court system.

The protesters carried banners with the slogans "Stop Exploiting Suharto's Condition", "Treat Suharto as a regular citizen", "Bring Suharto and his cronies to court" and "Confiscate the wealth of Suharto and his cronies".

With the former general so ill, a debate has emerged over whether to push ahead with legal action against him for graft.

After Suharto quit office in 1998 amid mass protests, he was charged with embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars of state funds. Authorities later dropped the criminal case due to his poor health, although he faces a civil case related to the use of state funds by his charities. Suharto and his family deny any wrongdoing.

Recovering

Earlier in the day, doctors said that Suharto's health had improved and he could eventually recover enough to go home. The former general has been in hospital for more than two weeks and was put on a ventilator after he suffered multiple organ failure.

The medical team treating Suharto at Jakarta's Pertamina hospital said in a statement he was still on a ventilator, but his heart and lung functions had improved and there were fewer signs of systemic infection. "Yes, we are optimistic," Mardjo Soebiandono, the head of the medical team, told reporters after being asked about Suharto's progress.

Asked whether Suharto might recover enough to be treated at home, Soebiandono told a news conference: "God willing, we hope so." He said doctors aimed to remove the ventilator, something that was initially tried earlier in the week.

"We are still putting maximum effort to end the use of instruments step by step, because we are dealing with an old man who has been using the devices for quite some time."

Soebiandono said Suharto remained sedated and doctors would conduct a test to examine the strength of his lung muscles later. Another doctor, Harryanto Reksodiputro, said only a small amount of fluid remained in the lungs and signs of blood poisoning had fallen.

The vast country of 226 million people has been gripped by the swings in Suharto's health in recent weeks, and he remains a polarising figure.

He came to power after crushing what was official described as a communist coup in 1965. His long rule was marked by rapid economic growth and political stability, as well as by massacres, human rights abuses and endemic corruption.

Suharto was hospitalised on Jan. 4 suffering from anaemia and low blood pressure due to heart, lung and kidney problems. The head of his medical team said last weekend he had only a 50:50 chance of survival.

But doctors say they have been having success fending off potentially fatal pneumonia and blood poisoning.

[Additional reporting by Adhityani Arga and Andreas Ismar; Writing by Ed Davies and Sara Webb; Editing by Bill Tarrant.]

Indonesia's students want justice for Suharto

Reuters - January 19, 2008

Fitri Wulandari and Harry Suhartono, Jakarta – As a student activist, Heri Akhmadi was beaten and jailed. Unable to witness the birth of his son because he was in prison, he named the boy Gempur Suharto, or "Attack Suharto", after the man he holds responsible for his suffering.

As Indonesia's former president Suharto lies critically ill in a Jakarta hospital, many of his victims regret that the former general who ruled Indonesia with an iron fist for 32 years has not been charged with crimes, even a decade after his ouster.

"Suharto took so many lives when he rose to power and he did the same when he stepped down," said Heri, who was jailed during university demonstrations in 1978 demanding that the People's Consultative Assembly not reappoint Suharto to another presidential term.

Suharto, now 86, came to power after he crushed what was officially described as an anti-communist coup in 1965.

Up to half a million people died in an army-backed purge in the following months, while intellectuals, teachers and artists, including the writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer and the painter Hendra Gunawan, were among the thousands of Indonesians sent to jail or labour camps for suspected left-wing sympathies.

During Suharto's 32 years in power, the armed forces crushed dissent in Aceh, Papua and East Timor, killed student activists, and were linked to extrajudicial killings of criminals.

"I was one of those lucky enough to escape. But what about others who were made to disappear or those who were killed?" said Heri, who in 1996 joined the political party headed by Megawati Sukarnoputri, Indonesia's president from 2001 to 2004.

Brutal regime

The Suharto regime's suppression of student activists continued well into the 1990s.

Budiman Sudjatmiko, also a member of Megawati's political party, told Reuters he was one of several students rounded up in 1996 and put on trial on the grounds he had masterminded a riot in Jakarta in 1996.

"The court was steered by the government and they could not prove that I was the mastermind of the event," said Sudjatmiko, who was at the office of Megawati's party during the riot.

"After they could not prove that I was guilty, the trial shifted to my political views and perspective and they charged me with subversion."

He was sentenced to 13 years in prison, but was saved from that fate when Suharto, who could no longer put a stop to widespread rioting, resigned from office.

"Putting him (Suharto) on trial is about investing in this country's future, more than just doing justice, and has nothing to do with revenge," said Sudjatmiko, now 37. "For those who fought for it and went to prison for it, democracy is all the more sweet and wonderful."

Intimidation

While Heri and Sudjatmiko entered politics following Suharto's fall, student activist Nezar Patria, 37, said he chose to continue his fight against the Suharto regime as a journalist.

As a student, Nezar went underground, cutting off contact with his family in Aceh after they were visited by intelligence officers who wanted to know his whereabouts.

"The Education and Culture Ministry branded me as a member of a radical student movement which supported communism. During my two years underground, I had to move from one place to another to escape military intelligence. I wrote articles to support myself and I managed to finish my thesis from my hideout," he told Reuters.

But he and three friends were kidnapped in March 1998 by a group called "Rose Team," an anti-terrorism unit of the Special Forces under the command of Suharto's former son-in-law, Prabowo Subianto.

Nezar said he was blindfolded and tortured for three days, then jailed for three months, and only released after Suharto's ouster.

Months after his release, Nezar would break out in a sweat just hearing a walky-talky like he ones he heard during his kidnapping. Years later, he came face to face with Prabowo when he was working as a reporter.

"I felt nothing while interviewing him because I had prepared. I had to be professional, not emotional," said Nezar. As for Suharto, "he may be honoured, but he is also a coward who doesn't want to admit his wrongdoing."

A beautiful resting place

Today (Singapore) - January 19, 2008

Jessinta Tan, Solo – Astana Giribangun, a solemn and beautiful graveyard on the slope of Mount Lawu on the outskirts of Solo city, has been temporarily closed for what is said to be "routine cleaning".

But in all likelihood, the mausoleum, which is guarded by soldiers and military police, is being spruced up to receive the body of former Indonesian President Suharto should he pass away.

"It is just routine cleaning of the mausoleum. However, a landslide down the road has diverted some workers away to clean up that area instead," said Mr Sukirno, 55, who has been a caretaker of Astana Giribangun for 32 years.

He is in charge of 21 workers who are busy working within and around the cemetery. Mr Suharto's mother-in-law was the first person to be buried when it was built in 1976. Since then, Mr Suharto's father-in-law, elder sister-in-law and wife have also been laid to rest in the three-tiered building with wooden pillars and a stupa-like roof.

It is meant to be the final resting ground of Mr Suharto, who will be laid next to the body of his wife Siti Hartinah – also known as Madam Tien – who died in 1996. She was a minor member of the Solo royal family.

Not far away from Astana Giribangun is another mausoleum on higher ground – Astana Mangadeg, which houses three main chambers of past Javanese kings and about 150 other graves of members of royal families and their households.

The charitable foundation controlled by Mr Suharto's children to manage Astana Giribangun has built a road linking the family mausoleum to the royal mausoleum.

This has become a talking point, with some observers viewing the move as reflecting the Suharto clan's desire to align with royalty.

Mr Suharto was born in the hamlet of Kemusuk in Central Java – escaping a troubled childhood to become a five-star general and later, the President of Indonesia from 1967 to 1998.

"Yayasan Tien (the charitable foundation) has built the 100m-road across a valley between two mountains to connect the mausoleums," said Mr Sukirno.

Mr Suharto last visited Astana Giribangun in 2005, according to Mr Sukirno. "He was accompanied by a large entourage of family members and relatives. He would spend quiet time praying by his wife's grave," he said.

While the family mausoleum is closed to the public for now, nearby Astana Mangadeg is welcoming a stream of visitors who have to hike up a steep trail to reach the royal mausoleum. They came bearing trays of flower petals to be offered to the deceased kings, as well as generous donations for the maintenance of the mausoleum.

"Many have come to offer prayers for Pak Harto. While some prayed for his speedy recovery, others prayed for his quick death," said a cemetery keeper, referring to supporters and critics of Mr Suharto.

In Jakarta, doctors said a dangerous infection attacking the critically ill former President had subsided. But they warned that his condition could deteriorate at any time, even as he amazed many with his strong will to live since suffering multiple-organ failures a week ago.

The 86-year-old former strongman, who ruled the world's most populous Muslim nation for more than three decades, stepped down in 1998 amid bloody nationwide riots and mass pro-democracy protests triggered by the 1997 Asian economic crisis.

One of Asia's political giants, Mr Suharto retreated to his family home in a Jakarta suburb – rarely venturing outside and managing to avoid a criminal trial for corruption allegations by citing poor health.

Soeharto 'benefits' from coverage

Jakarta Post - January 18, 2008

Jakarta – Media observers and activists said Thursday the countless reports on Soeharto's ill health could evoke sympathy from the public, which would then lead to forgiveness over his alleged past crimes.

Chairman of the Alliance of Independent Journalists Heru Hendratmo said footage of Soeharto being carried on his bed through the hall, which depicted his weak condition and had been aired repeatedly by television stations, was a particular example.

"Pak Harto and his family get the most advantages of the 'over dose' of reports, which have somewhat ignored the condition of victims of his alleged crimes, including corruption and human rights abuses," Heru told The Jakarta Post.

"We can't let this happen. The truth must be revealed. Forgiving this one person will hurt million others," he said.

The Institute for Press and Development Studies, Ignatius Haryanto, said media coverage on Soeharto's illness "now purposely tended to evoke sympathy". "On the other hand, not many media outlets, especially TV stations, have made critical reports on his alleged past crimes," Ignatius said.

Soeharto has been treated at Pertamina Hospital in South Jakarta since Jan. 4.

Communication and media expert Effendi Ghazali told the Post earlier Wednesday the "sympathy-evoking coverage" could spark questions around the lack of balance in reportage.

"Those who believe in the conspiracy theory will question media ownership," Effendi said. The public may understandably wonder if Soeharto or his family is behind the media, he said.

Television stations including RCTI, TPI and Metro TV are connected either with Soeharto's family or his close companions.

A number of University of Indonesia (UI) graduates who are part of the 98 UI Big Family group said they wanted to remind the public of "the humanity destruction, the injustice and the under-development of people that took place during Soeharto's presidency and were results of his dictatorship".

The organization said in a written statement: "The coverage on his illness has been intentionally aimed at making the public forgive Soeharto and blinding them to his past mistakes".

Soeharto's family lawyer Juan Felix Tampubolon told the Post that during his several visits to the hospital, he had not heard Soeharto's family complain about the excessive media coverage.

Ignatius said other patients and their relatives who visited Pertamina Hospital could be disturbed by dozens of journalists overcrowding the building's main entrance every day over the past two weeks. He said journalists "should know their place and not disturb the medical service provider's activities".

But one visitor to the hospital said he had "no problem" with journalists being at the hospital around the clock and said they seemed aware of hospital policies and rules. "As a matter of fact, we (visitors) have a unique view with the journalists' activities here," Kemang resident Sugiono said.

Sugiono's family member was taken to hospital the same week as Soeharto. "This is not something we can see every day," he said. (wda/uwi)

Backgrounder on Indonesia's Suharto

East Timor and Indonesia Action Network - January 18, 2008

Suharto, who ruled Indonesia from 1966 until he was ousted in 1998, decisively shaped the post 1965 political and economic trajectory of Indonesia. His supporters credited him with maintaining Indonesia's stability and setting it on the path to stable economic development. Suharto's more numerous critics condemn his decades-long pattern of authoritarianism, human rights violations, corruption, and political stagnation, a legacy from which Indonesia is still trying to recover.

Suharto was born in 1921 in central Java near Yogyakarta. He joined the Royal Netherlands' Indies Army, KNIL with relatively little education at the age of nineteen. His rise to power occurred entirely within the Indonesian military, particularly during Indonesia's war for independence from the Dutch (1945-49). In 1962 Indonesian President Sukarno appointed Suharto to head the Mandala command for the "liberation" of West Irian (West Papua) (1962-1963), and later the Trikora command responsible for the military confrontation with Malaysia (1963-1965). While not a particularly skilled military leader, Suharto used his commands to build patronage networks and secure the loyalty of his soldiers, skills he later used to consolidate his own power. In 1964 Suharto, now a Major-General was named commander of KOSTRAD, the Army's Strategic Reserve Command.

It was as KOSTRAD commander that Suharto took control of the Indonesian Army following the alleged Untung coup attempt of September 30, 1965. Using the September 30th Movement as a pretext for mass murder, in the words of historian John Roosa, from October 1965 to March 1966 he oversaw the extermination of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), the murder of between 400,000 and one million alleged PKI members and the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands more. He finally forced Sukarno to transfer authority to him on March 11, 1966.

Suharto's first task, in addition to overseeing the mass killings of alleged PKI members, was salvaging Indonesia's shattered economy and gaining the confidence of foreign investors and Western governments who controlled the aid and capital that Indonesia desperately needed. Lacking expertise of his own, he turned the task over to a group of predominantly US-trained economic advisers, who developed a major foreign investment law welcoming Western capital back to Indonesia on enviable terms.

Suharto assumed the Presidency in 1967, and in 1968 becoming supreme commander of the army as well. He was reelected to the presidency in tightly scripted elections in 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, and 1998. Throughout his rule successive US administrations provided extensive political, military and economic support, considering Suharto a valuable anti-Communist ally and a bastion of stability in a strategically vital and unstable region.

Suharto's New Order could best be described as a military bureaucratic regime, with a military administration running parallel to the civilian administration down to the village level. This politico-military administration proved adept at maintaining order, often through the brutal repression of political dissent. Lacking an independent mass base, the regime adopted a political organization, Golkar, comprised of functional groups including peasants, workers, business, and the armed forces, in order to mobilize political support.

Through the New Order period Indonesia experienced steady absolute economic growth, fueled in part by increases in oil revenues. While the World Bank and other regime supporters pointed to such figures as validation of their support, the numbers were seriously misleading, often invented out of whole cloth to mask rapidly increasing inequality.

Suharto's family and their allies, using a vast network of military and state controlled businesses and foundations, diverted a substantial fraction of that growth to themselves, stealing $15-30 billion in the process and making Suharto, according to the United Nations and the anti-corruption group Transparency International, one of the world's richest men and perhaps the most corrupt of recent history.

This corruption and unaccountability extended to the realm of foreign policy. In 1969 Indonesia annexed the territory of West Papua in a fraudulent UN-sponsored "Act of Free Choice," with subsequent military action against a deeply rooted independence movement leading to the deaths of tens of thousands. Similar repression in Aceh, where the armed forces killed tens of thousands of civilians in a savage counterinsurgency war beginning in the late 1970s, and elsewhere in the archipelago cemented Suharto's position as one of the most brutal leaders of the postwar era.

In December 1975 Suharto authorized the invasion of the former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Nearly a third of East Timor's population died as a result of Indonesia's invasion and occupation. Yet despite substantial US military and diplomatic support, Indonesia never fully consolidated its rule in East Timor, and the territory eventually regained its freedom in an UN-sponsored referendum in August 1999, after which Indonesian troops burnt East Timor to the ground and displaced virtually the entire population.

By the 1990s mounting social and economic inequality and the regimes heavy-handed repression of dissent had fatally undermined Suharto's domestic legitimacy, which was based on the promise of political order and steady economic growth. The regime's enormous corruption and lack of transparency likewise undermined economic stability, with currency stability and the expectations of foreign investors built upon largely fictional assumptions.

The Asian economic crisis of 1997, which hit Indonesia's economy particularly hard, detonated the tinder of nascent opposition to Suharto's rule. A mass movement of students, street vendors and the urban poor emerged, demanding Suharto's ouster. The withdrawal of Western – particularly US – support from Suharto and the splintering of Army unity in the face of widespread and growing protest forced his resignation from power after 32 years in May 1998.

Since his ouster Suharto has successfully fended off attempts by Indonesian civil society and pro-democracy organizations to hold him accountable for corruption and human rights abuses.

[Prepared for ETAN by Brad Simpson, a historian of US-Indonesian relations at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.]

Indonesia's ailing Suharto eludes court

Associated Press - January 17, 2008

Anthony Deutsch, Jakarta – Indonesia endured decades of bloodshed during Suharto's dictatorship. Yet, in an era when ruthless leaders are increasingly being held accountable, he has eased comfortably into old age without so much as a day in court.

The former dictator has been shielded since his May 1998 ouster by a graft-ridden legal system, government leaders who became wealthy during his 32-year rule and top military loyalists who want to clear his name.

Concerns about his mental and physical health too have kept him from facing trial: A series of strokes in recent years have left Suharto with permanent brain damage and impaired speech.

There is also a foreign hesitance to push justice in a fragile democracy that is a major US ally in the fight against terrorism.

Between 300,000 and 800,000 alleged communist sympathizers were killed during Suharto's bloody rise to power from 1965 to 1968, a spasm of violence led by the Indonesian army and conservative Muslim groups.

His troops killed another 300,000 in military operations against independence movements in Papua, Aceh and East Timor, while hundreds of thousands of others were jailed without trial or disappeared.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, once a general serving under Suharto, is among a stream of high-profile government officials who have flocked to the hospital to visit the former strongman, who is suffering from multiple organ failure and a potentially deadly blood infection.

"As a human being, like other leaders, certainly he made mistakes and committed wrongdoing, but it would not hurt us to thank him and appreciate his achievements and services to the country," Yudhoyono said Saturday.

In the past, concerns about instability in the vast and ethnically diverse archipelagic nation have been cited as reasons not to prosecute the retired five-star general.

Some believed that reopening wounds of the past "might yield a similar meltdown" to the Yugoslav federation, which broke apart in a series of wars in the 1990s after the death of strongman Josip Broz Tito, said Mark Drumbl, director of the Transnational Law Institute at Washington and Lee University in Virginia.

There also were fears his testimony would implicate multinational corporations and foreign governments "that were only too content to do business with him, support him, and make huge profits out of Indonesia's vast natural resources," he said.

Transparency International, a financial watchdog, estimates Suharto and his family amassed as much as $35 billion during his reign, with his six children and inner circle becoming fabulously wealthy running state enterprises. Efforts to recover the money have failed, and only one civil case is pending.

Yudhoyono sent the attorney general to the hospital this week to offer the family an out-of-court settlement for a $1.5 billion suit, seeking to avoid a potentially embarrassing public trial. Defense lawyers rejected the proposal, denying accusations of wrongdoing.

Only one member of Suharto's family has ever served time in jail – his youngest son, Tommy – for ordering the murder of a Supreme Court judge who had convicted him of graft. He was released in 2006 after spending just one-third of his 15-year sentence in a private air-conditioned cell.

Some critics say Indonesia's judicial system is so crippled by corruption that an international tribunal is needed to address past atrocities.

"If some Suharto family member needs to buy off a judge... that's easy for them to do," said William Liddle, an Indonesia expert at Ohio State University. "Virtually all court decisions in this country are bought."

There is enough evidence against Suharto to try him under international law for crimes against humanity and genocide, said Richard Tanter, a professor of international relations and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic died in UN custody while on trial for war crimes and genocide; Chile's Gen. Augusto Pinochet was facing human rights abuse allegations when he died at age 91; proceedings are under way against Liberia's ex- President Charles Taylor; and Cambodia is prosecuting Khmer Rouge leaders for the killing fields.

But previous calls that Suharto be tried for graft and rights abuses have all but died away in the wake of his illness, with even his fiercest critics in the predominantly Muslim country saying this is the time to forgive.

"The idea of pursuing old, sick men is unattractive, but the basic deterrence function of such prosecutions largely outweighs" the drawbacks, Tanter countered. "For the ghosts of all the slaughtered and tortured, I'd like to see justice."

Aceh

Aceh rebuilding 'unsustainable'

Jakarta Post - January 24, 2008

Jakarta – After three years post-tsunami reconstruction in Aceh has resulted in worsening deforestation, Greenomics Indonesia says.

The non-government organization said in its release international donors failed to translate their campaign against global warming into action in their reconstruction program in the country's westernmost province.

The Aceh Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR) which is coordinating the mega-project, as well as the international organizations involved, had instead accelerated the deforestation, the NGO reported, citing the use of timber without legal verification.

"The Aceh reconstruction has disrupted the forest ecosystem, which has protected the life of four million people in a sustainable way," the national coordinator Greenomics Indonesia Vanda Mutia Dewi said.

She said the floods that hit six regencies in Aceh last December were a result of the diminished forests in the area.

Groups demand Aceh truth body

Jakarta Post - January 23, 2008

Jakarta – Leading human rights groups urged Tuesday for the creation of a truth and reconciliation commission to address past crimes against humanity in Aceh.

Rafendi Djamin, coordinator of the Human Rights Working Group (HRWG), said at a hearing with the House of Representatives lawmakers that settlement of gross human rights violations in the once strife-torn province was a mandate the Indonesian government had yet to fulfill following the peace agreement it signed with the Free Aceh Movement nearly three years ago.

"The government has so far not made efforts to resolve human rights violations in Aceh. There have been no serious attempts to prevent widespread violence from recurring," Rafendi said in a joint statement.

Both the Aceh peace agreement signed in Helsinki in 2005 and Law No. 11/2006 on the Aceh government, stipulate the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission to deal with the atrocities in the westernmost province.

Violence was rampant during the military operation to crush rebels in Aceh between 1989 and 1998, marked by extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, tortures and intimidation.

"The government should reveal the truth about what happened in Aceh, especially during the period when conflicts prevailed," Rafendi said.

International Center for Transitional Justice head Galuh Wandita said the commission would help to rehabilitate victims of violence in Aceh, particularly women and children, and deliver justice to them.

Special rapporteur for Aceh Syamsidar said the peace agreement in Aceh had not brought about justice for the victims since perpetrators of the atrocities remained at large.

"The victims expect justice that can explain why they or their families were sacrificed. They need to know the whereabouts of their missing parents or where they are buried if they are already dead," Syamsidar said.

The commission, he said, would ensure there would be no more gross human rights violations in Aceh.

The House passed in 2004 the truth and reconciliation bill, which many had expected would address past human rights violations in the country. But the government kept delaying inauguration of the commission's elected members, before the Constitutional Court annulled the law in December 2006.

In the absence of the law, efforts to form a truth and reconciliation in Aceh will likely to face legal barriers.

The government has yet to move to revise the law and start over the selection of truth and reconciliation commission members. (rff)

Government urged to speed up reintegration in Aceh

Jakarta Post - January 21, 2008

Nani Afrida, Banda Aceh – The Aceh Reintegration Agency (BRA) has urged to the government to speed up its slow compensation of former members of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), and conflict victims, which it said had contributed to an increase of crime and public unrest over the past few months.

BRA Joint Forum member Wiratmadinata said he was deeply concerned with the recent shootings and armed clashes involving security personnel and gunmen, and that the incidents were due in part to the slow progress of the reintegration scheme.

"Acehnese people should not consider the use of violence as a political solution," he said. "All these cases must be settled to avoid a major and widespread conflict," he told The Jakarta Post here on Friday. He said those involved were combatants using violence for economic purposes.

Almost three years after Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement signed the Helsinki peace agreement, the planned reintegration of former rebels and conflict victims has yet to be fully accomplished. Under the scheme, former rebels and conflict victims would receive land and aid money to help them establish themselves.

BRA has had difficulties identifying former combatants and conflict victims, and the government has yet to allocate special funds in the state budget to compensate them. This has caused frustration among those seeking compensation, Wiratmadinata said.

The administration has so far identified some 3,000 ex-combatants and conflict victims eligible, and has compensated them according to the peace agreement.

Wiratmadinata said BRA had difficulty implementing certain areas under the agreement, which stipulated the creation of job opportunities and the improvement of social welfare.

The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) Aceh says the reintegration scheme was not designed well and had led to violence and an increase in the crime rate in the province.

"Under the supervision of the Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM), conflicting rivals – rebels and security personnel – could reach a mutual agreement to stop violence, but now that the mission has left, efforts to maintain peace have gone in separate directions.

"For instance, the police have never asked local military or the Aceh Transition Office to join in their operation to crack down on the ownership of illegal weapons," a commission spokesperson said.

Kontras Aceh recorded some 51 incidents involving gun battles in 2007 involving military and police personnel, ex-combatants and unidentified individuals.

The increase of crime and armed confrontations has made Aceh residents uneasy, and the road connecting the Banda Aceh with Medan, capital of North Sumatra, has seen an increase in armed robbery and extortion.

One resident of Lhokseumawe, Yusuf Usman, said he was confused by the large number of people in possession of weapons, despite the peace agreement.

"More and more people will be killed and the political condition in Aceh will deteriorate unless the possession of weapons is tightly regulated and monitored, and the peace agreement is implemented in the field," he said, adding that a certain side was not serious about making peace or ending the bloody conflict.

West Papua

Shackling Papuan intellectuals

Jakarta Post - January 18, 2008

Neles Tebay, Abepura, Papua – Since the fall of Soeharto's regime, Indonesia has apparently begun to move toward democracy. Indonesian citizens have found space to exercise their rights and duties without fear, pressure and intimidation from the state.

Indigenous Papuans, for their part, have taken advantage of the democratic atmosphere to express their opinions by writing books on some aspects of Papua.

Although there are only a few Papuan authors, it should be recognized that the publication of such books has encouraged more Papuans to exercise their freedom of opinion and expression through writing.

However, the central government has not always regarded the new developments as good news. Instead of being proud to see Papuans, who were once illiterate and relied on oral tradition to tell their stories, expressing their ideas in written form, the government considers the exercise of Papuans' intellectual creativity something suspicious if not dangerous.

Many books on Papua, particularly those authored by indigenous Papuans, are censored under certain criteria set by the government or are banned entirely.

The latest book to be outlawed by the government is "Tenggelamnya Rumpun Melanesia: Pertarungan Politik NKRI di Papua Barat" ("The Sinking of the Melanesian race: The Unitary State of Indonesia's Political Struggle in West Papua"), written by young author Papuan Sendius Wonda, and published by Deiyai, a Jayapura-based publishing house.

The introduction of the book is written by Rev. Socrates Sofyan Yoman, the chairperson of the Fellowship of the Baptist Churches in Papua.

According to the chief of Jayapura prosecutor's office, Sri Agung Putra, Wonda's 247-page book contains some elements that "discredit the government", "disturb public order", and "endanger national unity". Police seized the book from shelves immediately after the ban was announced on Dec. 14, and ordered those in possession of the book to give it up to the prosecutors.

Wonda's work is the second book on Papua on which the government has slapped a ban, after "Peristiwa penculikan dan pembunuhan Theys H Eluay 10 November 2001" ("The Abduction and Assassination of Theys H Eluay on November 10, 2001") by Benny Giay, a Papuan anthropologist, in 2002. Like Wonda's book, the book on Theys was considered dangerous to national unity.

Theys was a Papuan pro-independence charismatic leader who chaired the Papuan Presidium Council, a body formed by the second Papuan congress in 2000 to lead the peaceful struggle for the creation of an independent state of West Papua. He was abducted and assassinated by the Army's Special force.

It seems that the same criteria will be applied by the Attorney General's Office to screen and ban any books on Papua, more particularly those written by Papuans, in the future simply by saying the books contain elements categorized as dangerous to the Indonesian government and state.

However, everyone knows the Attorney General's Office has never clearly explained how the books endanger national unity, discredit the government, or disrupt public order.

By banning Papuan books based on unclear criteria, the central government shows its undemocratic face, despite its persistent self-promotion as a champion of democracy.

The undemocratic aspect of the government has been and is being manifested through its inability to face Papuans' dissenting opinions.

Instead of producing more books to encounter the content of the banned books, the government has abused its power to stifle Papuans' intellectual creativity and freedom of opinion and expression.

After decades nothing has changed in the way the government ignores Papuans' freedom of expression and their intellectual freedom. It remains restrictive in determining which books are appropriate or not for Papuans to read.

The presence of the Indonesian government in Papua, then, is very suspicious for it seems to exist not to protect the Papuans in exercising their intellectual creativity but to treat them cruelly.

The banning of books does not apparently constitute an isolated action. Rather, it reflects the government's policy of threatening Papuans' intellectual freedom.

[The writer is a lecturer at the Fajar Timur School of Philosophy and Theology in Abepura, Papua.]

Activist denounces Papua governor over Morning Star ban

Radio New Zealand International - January 18, 2008

A London-based Papuan activist has criticised the Governor of Indonesia's Papua for upholding a ban on the Morning Star Flag.

Governor Barnabas Suebu is demanding compliance with a new government regulation that bans the use of separatist attributes as regional symbols. He says the provincial legislature will discuss a more suitable regional symbol than the Morning Star, which is associated with Papuan separatists.

In 2005 a man was jailed for 15 years for raising the flag. And this week, police in Jayapura arrested two women who were trading souvenirs carrying the Morning Star logo.

Activist Benny Wenda says this makes a mockery of provisions under Papua's Special Autonomy.

"Because Indonesia promised that the Morning Star is like a cultural symbol, and this is what the Autonomy package already promised. Then why now have they banned all people making handbags with the Morning Star and printing tee-shirts, and any sort of identity and now the ban. There is not any freedom in West Papua."

Scared of a Papuan bag ... scared of the truth

Richard Samuelson - January 18, 2008

It may not look very scary to you or me, but to the Government of Indonesia it is a dangerous threat to the "unity of the nation". No, it's not an assault rifle or a pound of high explosives, or even a bow and some arrows ....it is a BAG.

Yesterday in Jayapura, West Papua, two women, Yohana Pekei & Nelly Pigome were interrogated by Indonesian police and intelligence agents because they make bags and sell them for a few pence to help support their families.

What could possibly be so dangerous about a bag sold by the roadside by two West Papuan women?

If I told you that the bag has a star woven into its design, maybe you can now understand why the Indonesian State is so terrified of this particular bag? Still confused? Well, let me tell you that the star is the "Morning Star", symbol of 45 years of dreams of West Papuan independence from Indonesia. When a State doesn't enjoy the support of the entire population of a territory it claims as its own, it cannot dare to allow even the smallest sign of disagreement.

So the NKRI, the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia, with all its pomp, majesty and immense military power... is now scared of a bag. Ten years after the fall of the dictator Suharto, an event which was supposed to herald a new era of openness and democracy, Indonesia is now plumbing new depths in a last desperate attempt to keep its grasp on West Papua.

Earlier this week, Barnabas Suebu, Indonesia's colonial Governor in West Papua, ordered the Police to enforce a new law, Article 6 of Government Regulation 77, 2007, making it a criminal offence to "display, sell or use" ... "any flag or logo used by separatist movements".(1) Yohana & Nelly's bag is now an illegal bag.

In 2004, two West Papuan independence activists, Filep Karma & Yusak Pakage were jailed for 15 & 10 years respectively for peacefully raising the Morning Star flag itself. Now it's Yohana & Nelly's turn for Indonesia to turn into criminals... for making and selling a bag.

Last November, Time Magazine acclaimed Suebu as a "Hero of the Environment" for his supposed promises to start protecting West Papua 's threatened rainforests. This week Suebu has revealed his true colours as a "Hero of Indonesian nationalism".

And Indonesia is not only scared of Papuan bags. It's scared of Papuan books too. In December, Indonesian State prosecutors seized 60 copies of a book by Papuan academic, Sendius Wonda, entitled "The Sinking of the Melanesian Race: The Political Struggle in West Papua".

"The book is misleading, it could spark unrest and divide the Papuan community," said Rudi Hartono, the Chief of Indonesian intelligence (BIN) in West Papua. "We will continue raiding bookstores in other places [searching] for the book".(2)

And here is why Yohana & Nelly's bags and Sendius Wonda's book are so scary to the Government of Indonesia; they tell the truth ...the inconvenient but undeniable truth that the vast majority of West Papuans want independence from Indonesia.

But as an activist with the Free West Papua Campaign I would say that wouldn't I? Well don't just take it from me. In June 2006, the then BBC Jakarta correspondent, Rachel Harvey, was allowed the rare privilege of a visit to West Papua by the Indonesian government. Here is what she said on her return:

"I didn't talk politics with every Papuan I met. But whenever the subject came up, and it did repeatedly, everybody I spoke to told me they wanted independence."(3)

And in February 2007, a senior Indonesian political sciences academic, Muridan S. Widjojo, from the Centre for Political Studies at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) [an official Institute under the authority of the Indonesian President himself] who unlike foreign academics or journalists is given free access to West Papua by the Indonesian military, admitted with remarkable candour:

"However, we have to realize that deep inside, almost every Papuan wants to be free from Indonesia."(4)

And to trump them all, how can you doubt the aforementioned Indonesian Governor himself, Barnabas Suebu, speaking in 2000, before his current period in power? Here is Suebu, the same man who this week declared Yohana and Nelly's bag illegal, interviewed by Tempo magazine during the "Papuan Spring", the brief and wonderful period of openness which followed the collapse of the Suharto dictatorship, an era cruelly closed with the November 2001 assassination of West Papuan independence leader Theys Eluay by Indonesian Special Forces:

Q. "In your view, will the people of Irian Jaya vote for independence or autonomy if a referendum is held?"

A. "Based on my observations in Jayapura, I predict there will be a greater preference for independence. So, this is a serious matter. I hope no one will say again that this is the wish of a trivial few. They do not accept autonomy.... They only want independence... The people of Papua insist on independence but Jakarta rejects it... the people are craving for independence."(5)

A Papuan bag and a Papuan book. Indonesia is indeed very scared.... of the truth.

Notes:

1. Cenderawasih Pos 11 January 2008 "Morning Star flag ban stands: Suebu"

2. The Jakarta Post 15 December 2007 "[Indonesian] Government Bans, Confiscates Book on Papuan Political Struggle"

3. Te Waha Nui Online 14 June 2006 "West Papuan clergyman to speak on human rights at seminar" http://www.tewahanui.info/news/140606_westpapua.shtml

4. Jakarta Post 1 February 2007 "Papuan Separatists not a threat". http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20070201.H05

5. Tempo Magazine Interview NO. 34/XXIX 23 October 2000 "Barnabas Suebu: "They Only Want Independence"

[Richard Samuelson is the co-director of the Free West Papua Campaign (UK), www.freewestpapua.org.]

Human rights/law

Arrest former intelligence officer: Activists

Jakarta Post - January 18, 2008

Jakarta – An alliance of human rights activists demanded Thursday the arrest of a former top intelligence officer for questioning around the 2004 murder of fellow rights campaigner Munir Said Thalib.

Former State Intelligence Agency (BIN) deputy chief Muchdi Purwo Prandjono should be made a suspect in the case after his name was linked by a BIN agent to the murder, the alliance said.

Head of the Solidarity Action Committee For Munir (KASUM) Asmara Nababan said Muchdi should first be indicted on charges of perjury.

During a court session in 2005, Muchdi denied he knew or made telephone conversations with acquitted convict Pollycarpus Budihari Prijanto.

"If Muchdi has been named a suspect, prosecutors can proceed with further probes to find whether he is involved in the death of Munir or not," Asmara said. "And if Muchdi is involved, we want the investigation to proceed to reveal the roles of other officers in the assassination."

On Tuesday, prosecutors at the Central Jakarta District Court presented a written statement from BIN agent Budi Santoso proving Muchdi and former Garuda pilot Pollycarpus had established a relationship.

Budi failed to appear in court but in a written testimony said: "Pollycarpus called me several times asking whether Muchdi was at the office or not. I was also often ordered by Muchdi to check on where Pollycarpus was. When Pollycarpus came under investigation by the police, Muchdi also ordered me to give him between Rp 3 million to 4 million (around US$270 to $360) on two or three different occasions."

Pollycarpus, who was present at the court hearing, denied Budi's testimony.

KASUM secretary and coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) Usman Hamid said the police should take Budi's testimony into serious consideration. The testimony also confirmed previously presented evidence including records of telephone conversations and short messages between Pollycarpus and Muchdi.

"Now that BIN agent Budi has upheld the discovery, the police should have no more excuse to name Muchdi a suspect," Usman said. "They should have even declared him a suspect once Budi provided prosecutors with the written statement."

During a Pollycarpus trial in November 2005, Muchdi, who was presented as a witness, denied he had made the telephone conversations or sent the short messages. He said someone else had used his mobile phone to contact Pollycarpus.

At the Thursday news conference, Munir's widow Suciwati said the fact-finding team, an ad-hoc agency formed by the government to probe Munir's death, had faced many difficulties in attempts to reveal the involvement of BIN in the case. "The investigation and evidence have clearly led us to an indication of BIN's involvement," she said.

"(The evidence indicates) at least the spy agency has provided facilities, such as telephones, for people implicated in the murder. And based on all the findings, the police and our judicial institutions should have no more reasons to avoid probing the BIN over the murder case," Suciwati said.

Munir, a vocal and staunch critic of the Indonesian Military (TNI) for its involvement in human rights violations across the country, was found dead on board a Garuda Indonesia flight on Sept. 7, 2004. A post mortem examination showed he died from arsenic poison.

To-date, the police have named three suspects – Pollycarpus, former Garuda president director Indra Setiawan and secretary to Garuda's chief pilot Rohainil Aini. (lln)

Rights activists demand more action

Jakarta Post - January 18, 2008

Jakarta – Families of missing human rights activists demanded President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono fulfill his election promise to resolve human rights violation cases.

The Association of Relatives of Missing People (IKOHI)'s chairman Mugiyanto said Thursday the government's poor handling of such cases had left thousands of families in the dark on the whereabouts of their loved ones.

He said the government lacked the will to deal with the cases. "The government isn't serious (about this) yet. The state is implementing the so-called politics of forgetting. We are made to forget the New Order regime transgressions."

He said he regretted recent initiatives that would see former president Suharto pardoned. "How can we gloss over bleak pages of our past," he asked, referring specifically to state-sponsored violence in 1965 and the 1989 Talang Sari massacre in Lampung.

Human rights activist Rido Triawan said, "The president can't speak on people's behalf and forgive Soeharto just like that. "Legally speaking, Yudhoyono would need to grant amnesty or grace, but how can he grant that to someone who has never been tried..."

As the right of New Order regime victims, Rido and Mugiyanto demanded investigations be resumed in unresolved cases including cases that had been dismissed by the Attorney General's Office (AGO).

Based on reports of missing persons received by IKOHI from families and relatives of the missing, the organization says at least 14 people disappeared between 1997 and 1998, just prior to the resignation of strongman Soeharto.

They said such disappearances should be the subject of ad-hoc human rights tribunals in order to provide legal and psychological closure to victims.

Most of those who went missing were pro-democracy activists, among them Democratic People's Party members Herman Hendrawan, Ucok Munandar Siahaan, Yadin Muhidin and Hendra Hambali; street singer and poet Widji Thukul; and three members of the United Development Party, Deddy Hamdun, Noval Alkatiri and Ismail.

IKOHI also advocates the causes of victims of human rights cases such as the killings in 1965-66 of alleged communists, the 1984 Tanjung Priok massacre and cases arising during the Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam conflict.

"The president should recall the promises he made when he first assumed the presidency, namely resolving past cases of human rights abuse," Rido said, adding that human rights laws enacted in 1999 and 2000 needed to be revised to give greater authority to the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM).

"Komnas HAM must have the same autonomy and authority as the Corruption Eradication Commission. Otherwise, we remain stuck with the AGO, which has so far stifled efforts to resolve human rights abuse."

Mugiyanto added, "The current regime needs to refer back to its founding principles and shift its paradigm from empty human rights rhetoric to substantial justice." (amr)

Spy agency's top officials linked to activist's murder

Sydney Morning Herald - January 17, 2008

Mark Forbes, Jakarta – Fresh evidence has emerged that ties Indonesia's Intelligence Agency (BIN) to the poisoning of a leading human rights activist, Thalib Munir, indicating top officials lied to court hearings about the 2004 murder.

Describing a new dossier of evidence from a senior undercover agent as a "smoking gun", human rights groups today will demand police prosecute the former deputy director for covert operations, Purwoprandjono Muchdi, for perjury and murder.

In a sworn declaration, Agent Budi Santoso said he helped Pollycarpus Priyanto draft a letter to the head of the national airline Garuda, ordering he be assigned to security duties. The letter enabled Priyanto, a former pilot with the carrier, to board a flight to Amsterdam with Munir, then allegedly poison him.

The assignment letter was to be signed by BIN's deputy chief Mohammad As'ad, according to Mr Santoso. He also said that Priyanto was part of BIN's "network" and in regular contact with Mr Muchdi.

"I was often ordered by Muchdi to check on where Pollycarpus was," said Mr Santoso, who was then an operations director with BIN. He also delivered several thousand dollars from Mr Muchdi to Priyanto before and after Mr Munir's murder.

In previous court hearings Priyanto and Mr Muchdi denied knowing each other. Phone records show 41 calls between the pair about the time of the murder, but Mr Muchdi claimed others were using his phone.

The agency's head, Syamsir Siregar, has written to prosecutors saying Mr Santoso could not appear in court as he was on "state duty" overseas.

Mr Santoso's statement was produced only after judges in the murder trial – who are considering fresh charges against Priyanto and the former chief executive of Garuda, Indra Setiawan – suggested they would force him to appear.

Usman Hamid, the head of Mr Munir's human rights organisation, Kontras, said he would meet senior police officers today to demand action on the new evidence.

"Before now BIN denied having links to Pollycarpus; this disproves that," Mr Hamid said. "Mr Muchdi should be summonsed and charged, he clearly had a role in planning the premeditated murder of Munir."

Mr Munir had angered the intelligence and military establishment by exposing corruption and human rights abuses in Aceh and Papua. During a flight to Amsterdam in September 2004 Mr Munir was befriended by Priyanto. The pair visited an airport coffee shop while in transit in Singapore where Mr Munir was poisoned with arsenic.

Labour issues

Employers oppose hike in minimum wages

Jakarta Post - January 19, 2008

Jakarta – Many employers have voiced strong opposition to the minimum wage hikes of Jan. 1, 2008, saying the remuneration policy should be revised to maintain a conducive investment climate in the country.

Employers in the industrial zone of Riau Islands have filed a lawsuit at the State Administrative Court against an 11 percent increase in monthly wages to Rp 960,000 (US$100) from Rp 860,000 in 2007, while more than 43 labor-intensive industries in West Java have filed a request to postpone the increase.

Deputy chairman of the Riau Islands chapter of the Indonesian Employers's Association (Apindo), Abdullah Gose, said employers would pay workers at the previous rate until the court made a decision.

"If we are defeated in the case, we will appeal to the Supreme Court until the governor reviews his decree on the new minimum wage," he told The Jakarta Post in Batam on Friday.

Employers in Batam and Bintan expressed their objection to the hikes because of the soaring world fuel price which has triggered high prices in raw materials.

"Many investors are relocating their factories to China and Vietnam partly because of the unpredictable wage hikes which have affected the investment climate in the country," said Abdullah.

In Bandung, West Java, chief of the manpower and transmigration office Sukarto Karnen said many employers had requested exemption from the new wages because of economic difficulties.

He said it was the governor's prerogative to accept or reject the request, but labor inspectors could refer to the governor's decree on the new wage hike in conducting the industrial relations supervision.

"We are waiting on an official response from the governor on the requests," he said.

The West Java minimum wage has been raised by almost ten percent to Rp 568,000 per month from Rp 516,000 in 2007.

Employers, mostly owners of garment and shoe factories, have blamed the economic difficulties on the flow of Chinese products and garments into the country.

Employers in North Sumatra said the wage increase was too high considering the year-long blackout in 2007.

"The disturbed supply of power and liquefied natural gas to industrial zones in addition to the four-times-a-day blackout in North Sumatra have caused trillions of rupiah in losses to investors in the province, and the new wage hike has been a special headache to most employers," chairman of the province chapter of Apindo, Parlindungan Purba, told the Post in Medan.

The minimum wage in the province was raised by eight percent to Rp 820,000 per month from Rp 720,000 in 2007.

Parlindungan called on the government to review the minimum wages once every three years, instead of annually, to create a conducive climate for investors in the country.

"Each year the government reviews the minimum wage, employers and employers are involved in industrial disputes and this disturbs the investment climate and security," he said.

The chairman of the province chapter of the Confederation of Indonesian Prosperous Labor Union, Yos Waruwu, said most workers and labor unions opposed the low hike, which he said would only maintain workers' purchasing power.

"Employers should not only demand to be understood but should also understand the workers's poor livelihood," he said, adding that the ideal minimum wage for a married worker in the province was Rp 1.2 million.

Employers want law left unchanged

Jakarta Post - January 18, 2008

Andi Haswidi, Jakarta – Disappointed by the final draft of a severance pay regulation, the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) said it wanted to maintain the current arrangement in the Labor Law.

"Kadin and the government had agreed upon a maximum severance pay equivalent of five times an employee's salary," Kadin chairman Mohammad Hidayat told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

"But they suddenly scrapped that from the draft and provided no exact limit," Hidayat said.

The government, he said, would create more uncertainty if it proceeded with the draft. "We would rather go back to using the arrangement under Article 156 of the Labor Law," he said.

Representing domestic and foreign employers, Kadin has been in a constant battle with labor unions since July over a draft deal on severance pay, which would replace an article of the Labor Law.

The current Labor Law demands a maximum severance pay equivalent of nine times an employee's regular salary, a condition that at times has led companies to neglect severance payments, especially if they have gone bankrupt.

Indonesian Employers Association chairman Sofyan Wanandi said the government had disregarded previous agreements, including the funding amounts allocated to insurance firms for severance pay.

"Not only do we have to set aside funds, we must also pay the firms administering the severance pay," Sofyan said.

"That is already an added cost for us which can cripple our cash flow. We would rather go back to managing the severance pay internally."

Employers have agreed to allocate funds worth 3 percent of an employee's salary per month, while labor unions have pushed for a minimum of 8 percent. "With this kind of draft, we would prefer to lobby the government to drop it and go back to using the Labor Law," Sofyan said.

Indonesian Prosperity Trade Union (KSBSI) president Rekson Silaban criticized the employers' stance on the issue.

"I think there has been a misinterpretation here. There is no such thing as going back to the Labor Law. The upcoming severance regulation is an extension of the law," Rekson said.

He said unions would support the draft as long as the government let employers pay the severance fund administrator.

On Wednesday, Manpower and Transmigration Minister Erman Suparno told Kontan daily the draft would soon be signed by the President. "All is well in the process, the state secretary is currently finalizing the legal procedure," he said.

The existing Labor Law is at the top of the government's investment climate reform agenda, which aims to improve Indonesia's global competitiveness.

The deliberation of a new labor bill at the House of Representatives was brought to an end when labor unions staged the country's largest labor rally to-date in April 2006, which involved an estimated 50,000 workers.

Kadin and political analysts have predicted the process will likely recommence after the 2009 election because "it would be political suicide to push forward now".

Environment/natural disasters

Community-based green areas needed, say NGOs

Jakarta Post - January 24, 2008

Evi Mariani, Jakarta – In response to the administration's plan to evict thousands of residents in 2008 to make way for green areas, organizations have offered a community-based approach in revitalizing green areas.

The organizations said they believed that the concept would benefit the city, the communities and the public.

"The city could save some budget money for revitalization and maintenance, while it would still get the green areas," Nurkholis Hidaya from Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH) told a press conference Wednesday.

Nurkholis said that in the draft of the city budget, the institute noted that during 2008 the city planned to evict 16 communities to get 55,540 square meters of green areas. The fund for the evictions and revitalization is set at Rp 27.3 billion.

The series of evictions is another phase in the administration's plan to increase the city's existing green area, 9.6 percent of its total 9,156 hectares, to 13.9 percent by 2010.

Among the 16 communities to be moved are the fish and flower traders on Jl. Barito, who were evicted on Jan. 18. The next community to be evicted is ceramics and rattan traders in Rawasari, Central Jakarta. Vendors in Rawasari got their eviction orders on Wednesday.

LBH Jakarta and the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), which helped Barito fish and flower sellers protest against the move, said communities in Jakarta were smart. They had the capacity to offer solutions to the city's problems, if the city administration allowed them, the groups said.

"We work with at least two architecture firms, which support community-based design. For Barito, the YP+A firm had designed a lively hybrid park," Nurkholis said.

He said it was unfortunate the administration had decided to its own design, despite praising the one proposed by the vendors.

Selamet Daroyni from Walhi said the city's plan to evict thousands was unfair and showed the city did not have the courage to shut down the malls and hotels sitting on formerly green areas and instead preferred to tackle the powerless.

"Jakarta's green areas have dwindled from 37.2 percent in 1965 to 6.2 percent in 2007, largely thanks to the developments of large commercial buildings like malls and hotels," Selamet said in the conference.

"The communities only use a small percentage the green areas, about 10 percent, probably," he added. "Therefore, we think the city's attempt to evict these communities won't touch the source of Jakarta's environmental problems."

Pollution in Batam keeps fishermen on shore

Jakarta Post - January 23, 2008

Fadli, Batam – Hundreds of traditional fishermen in Batam, Riau Islands, have stopped fishing over the past few weeks due to the heavy pollution dumped by oil tankers in Batam waters.

Jumangin, a 60-year-old fisherman in Teluk Mata Ikan, said most fishermen in his village had stayed home and a few had sought other work in construction projects since the sea and coastal areas around the village were heavily contaminated.

Fishermen say they have frequently filed complaints to relevant authorities but no positive response has been given so far.

"The polluted waters have forced fish to migrate to deeper waters and made nets and bodies black. It is impossible for us to use our small boats to fish in deeper water along the Malacca Strait," he told The Jakarta Post here on Tuesday.

Jumangin said he doubted the capacity of local security authorities to protect the area against sea pollution. He said it the main pollution was caused by oil sludge dumped by oil tankers passing through the Malacca Straits and it has happened right under security authorities' noses.

"Each time we file complaints to the authorities we are asked to identify oil tankers and vessels dumping oil sludge. It is their task, and not ours, to conduct surveillance and arrest the polluting tankers," Jumangin said, also an executive of the local chapter of the All-Indonesian Fishermen Association (HNSI).

Under normal conditions, fishermen could earn up to Rp 200,000 per day but following the pollution, Jumangin said it had been very difficult to get even Rp 40,000 a day.

Another fisherman, Abdurrahman, said he has moored his boat for three weeks and would be seeking other work if the pollution continues. He said many vessels dump toxic wastewater in the Batam sea and local authorities did not take any measures to stop them.

"The poisonous wastewater is packed in plastic bins before being dumped far off the island but later they are carried back to shore by waves and strong winds," he said.

Meanwhile, chairman of the Toxic Waste Transporters Association (Aspel B3) Kurniawan said the oil sludge and toxic waste were dumped by tankers undergoing cleaning service in the middle of the sea between Indonesia and Singapore.

He also regretted the government could not enforce the law to stop the sea pollution, saying Indonesia should uphold its sovereignty on its sea territories.

Secretary of the HNSI local office Awaluddin Nasution said almost all fishermen in the Riau archipelago could not set out to the sea after the waters were badly polluted. "Foreign oil tankers have dumped their sludge when the wind was blowing toward Indonesia," he said, citing that the dumping occurred when the tankers were undergoing an illegal tank cleaning service which involved Indonesian workers.

He said he suspected the reason authorities had turned a blind eye to the oil dumping was because they were receiving bribes from oil tankers during their passage through Indonesian waters.

Chief of the local waste water and environmental impact management office Dendi N. Purnomo said his office has deployed devices to collect toxic waste to be sent to the toxic waste water processing plant in Cibinong in West Java.

He also said the sea pollution has also affected the tourist resort on the island. "Tourists can no longer swim or do other water activities like surfing or canoeing.

He said he had spoken with the naval base on the island to enhance supervision and urged them to bring harsh sanctions against oil tankers dumping waste in the area.

Activists lament lack of action post-Bali

Jakarta Post - January 17, 2008

Adianto P. Simamora, Jakarta – Environmental campaigners expressed regret Wednesday about the absence of concrete government action to follow up on the UN-sponsored Bali conference on climate change.

Chalid Muhammad from the Indonesian Forum for Environment (Walhi) said the public and activists should put more pressure on the government to take steps that will be effective in turning around human-induced global warming.

"The Bali 'party' is over. We reap applause from the world as a good host of conference. But the government takes no actions to save the planet," he said. "What we need now is real actions in the field or otherwise more people will become poor."

Most urgent, according to Chalid, was sharing knowledge with the public on how to save the planet as stipulated in the Bali road map. "The government must also show and detail concrete steps to stop emissions from the forestry," he said.

The Bali meeting was the world's largest conference held in 2007. It brought together officials and activists from 189 countries joining the Kyoto Protocol on the climate change.

The two-week meeting resulted in the Bali road map that required deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to combat severe impacts of climate change.

The Kyoto Protocol, the only multilateral treaty which directly addresses efforts to turn around global warming, requires rich nations to reduce emissions by 5 percent starting this year. But Indonesia and other developing countries have no obligations to do so.

The Bali conference also adopted the so-called reduction of emissions from deforestation in developing countries (REDD) scheme. This paves the way for forested nations like Indonesia to be rewarded in dollars for successful efforts to protect forests.

But Chalid said the market mechanisms of the REDD and the carbon trading system would not be able to solve climate change problems.

Henry Saragih, director of an international farmers movement, La Via Campesina, shared Chalid's views.

"Saving the environment can not be accomplished solely through the market mechanism," said Henry, who was named by the English daily the Guardian as one of the 50 people who could save the planet. "It will fail. We want real actions from the world to cut emissions," he said.

Henry, who also chairs the Indonesian Farmers Union (SPI), said the Bali meeting didn't benefit local farmers. The government has said farmers would experience unpredictable and extreme weather events due to climate change. It said the changes in wet and dry seasons would have serious impacts on agricultural activities.

Data from the Agriculture Ministry shows that in 1990s harvest failures reached 100,000 tons per regency due to drought. The amount rose to 300,000 tons in 2000. There are currently about 60 million farmers out of 230 million people in the country.

Experts said that for every one Celsius decree increase in temperature, rice yields would decrease by about 10 percent.

Chalid and Henry also said they opposed the government's plan to set up a new team on climate change as a follow-up to the Bali conference. "It will not be effective... it would only waste more budget funds," Chalid said.

Gender issues

Thousands support early breast-feeding

Jakarta Post - January 24, 2008

Agnes Winarti, Jakarta – Thousands of pregnant women gathered Wednesday in the Plenary Hall of the Jakarta Convention Center.

A small group of them sang a rendition of a popular song, replacing the lyrics with: "Aku takut, bayiku tidak diberi ASI. Aku takut, bayiku menjadi anak sapi. Aku takut, bayiku menjadi kurang gizi."

The lyrics roughly translate as, "I'm afraid, if my baby doesn't get breast-fed. I'm afraid, if my baby becomes a calf. I'm afraid, if my baby doesn't get enough nutrition."

During Wednesday's event, about 1,800 pregnant women and midwives from 42 districts in Jakarta's five municipalities and Thousand Islands regency pledged to initiate early breast-feeding right after childbirth.

"There's no better place for a newborn infant than on her mother's bare chest," said pediatrician and chairwoman of the Indonesian Lactation Center, Dr. Utami Roesli.

"Let the baby instinctively crawl by herself and find the mother's nipple, at least within an hour after delivery," explained the doctor, who has campaigned for the past several years for early breast-feeding.

"First-hour breast-feeding can prevent up to 22 percent of newborn deaths," Utami said.

The latest research on early breast-feeding by a team of researchers, led by Karen Edmond of the UK, published in scientific journal Pediatrics in March 2006, shows 22 percent of neonatal deaths of 10,947 breast-fed infants in Ghana could have been prevented had all infants been breast-fed within the first hour.

But early breast-feeding alone is not enough to reduce the infant mortality rate, Utami said. She said it should be followed by six months of exclusive breast-feeding, and then breast-feeding with additional food until the age of 2.

"If mothers took all three steps the mortality rate of children under five in the country could be reduced by up to 41 percent," she said. In Indonesia, this would mean saving the lives of some 30,000 children each year, while globally, up to one million lives might be saved.

According to a 2005 WHO report, an infant dies every six minutes in Indonesia, while a child under the age of five dies every two-and-a-half minutes.

Farida, a midwife at a public health center, or Puskesmas, in Cipinang Besar Selatan, East Jakarta, said she started introducing early breast-feeding about two or three years ago.

"Most of my patients come from low-economy families. They are enthusiastic about breast-feeding because it can cut the expenses for buying expensive baby formula," said Farida, who has worked as a midwife since 1993.

According to Utami, buying formula can cost Rp 3.3 million per baby per semester. It is estimated that every six months, more than Rp 18 trillion is spent nationwide for formula milk.

Nasiah, 25, who is 8 months' pregnant, said she originally planned to feed her baby with formula, because she worked long shifts in a factory.

"I've changed my mind. I will breast-feed, although it probably won't be easy since I'm working." State Minister for Women's Empowerment Meutia Hatta, Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo and his wife, Tatik F Bowo, who is an ambassador for the early breast- feeding initiative in Jakarta, were present during Wednesday's ceremony.

"We feed infants processed cow milk for the sake of practicality. We must stop doing that," Fauzi said.

Long road for women in politics

Jakarta Post - January 18, 2008

Jakarta – The Political Parties Law stipulates that 30 percent of the House of Representatives and the People's Representative Council should be female. But the reality is that only 11.27 percent of the House's 550 members are women.

In the regions, women face challenges in becoming legislative candidates and sometimes have difficulties voting independently.

"Patriarchy is like a plague in our pesantren (Islamic boarding school). Many female voters are forced to vote for the candidates whom their teachers, who mostly are males, have instructed them to. If they vote otherwise, the teachers won't acknowledge them as students and this scares the voters," said Rukayah Maksum, a member of the Indonesian Women's Coalition for Justice and Democracy (KPI) in the East Java town Bondowoso.

"To make things worse, political parties usually take turns at pesantren during the election campaign while exploiting the culture for their own political gains," she said during the KPI's national political consolidation assembly here Wednesday.

Sri Wahyuningsih, an academic and KPI member from Malang, East Java, lamented the general apathy of women in her province, particularly toward getting involved in politics.

"It's really not easy asking around for women who would be interested in becoming legislative candidates. There is a great deal of shyness and second-guessing among the women, not to mention funding concerns," she said.

Another KPI member, Alfianda, who hails from Cirebon, West Java, said many male members of local political parties denied the applicability of the 2008 Political Parties Law in provinces, regencies and municipalities.

"They claimed the 30 percent quota was only applicable on the national scale. Whereas in the provinces and regencies, proportional representation is still the rule of the game," she said. "Obviously, politicians and legislatures in the regions feel threatened by the possible increase of women's participation in politics."

A central figure in the drafting of the law, Tyas Indyah Iskandar of Golkar Party, said the main opposition she received when lobbying for the 30 percent quota to apply across the board was that party executives in the capital and regions alike had in fact come from small and local political parties.

"There were representatives who literally begged us to compromise by limiting the application of the article so as to not hurt the performance of local parties," she said. (amr)

Islam/religion

Rights activists seek end to religious freedom violations

Jakarta Post - January 23, 2008

Jakarta – Discrimination and acts of violence in the name of religion in the country have reached a level that could threaten democracy, rights activists have warned.

"The rights violations and discrimination, in terms of matters of religious freedom, have begun to threaten our constitutional system. The government, however, hasn't shown its strong commitment to taking action against those who perpetrate attacks, discrimination and violations against the freedom of religion," Hendardi, chairman of the coordinating agency for the Institute for Democracy and Peace (SETARA), told a hearing with House of Representatives lawmakers on Tuesday.

He said all state officials and citizens needed to protect the Constitution if they wanted to make the Constitution the citizens' political tool.

SETARA submitted its 2007 report on human rights violations related to religious freedom at the meeting. The report cited at least 185 violations of religious freedoms in 135 incidents in 2007.

The report said state officials violated citizens' rights 92 times by imposing limitations on and arresting followers of allegedly heretical sects. It also said state officials ignored attacks on communities or groups 93 times.

Al-qiyadah al-Islamiyah suffered the most from these violations, followed by Christians and Catholics and then Ahmadiyah followers, said Bonar Tigor Naipospos, deputy chief of SETARA.

Bonar said the state was supposed to be neutral regarding religious matters and that its decisions should be based on the Constitution and human rights policy, not the Indonesian Ulemas Council's (MUI) edicts. "It's OK if the government takes suggestions from the MUI, but not to make decisions based on MUI's statements alone," he said.

SETARA proposed the government take the initiative of making a political review of the existing laws, which still allowed discrimination in religious matters; ensure legal actions toward officials who violate the Constitution; ask the Attorney General and Police Chief to take responsibility for ignoring violence; and disband the Coordinative Council for Monitoring Sects and Beliefs in Community (Bakor Pakem), which it considers counter to human rights and democracy.

Previously, SETARA voiced its concerns to Commission VIII, and plans to bring them to the attention of the National Police and the Attorney General's Office. (rff)

Ulema cannot dictate religious policy: Official

Jakarta Post - January 22, 2008

Jakarta – No matter how influential it is, the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI) can not dictate government religious policy, a senior government official said Monday.

"The government will continue to make their own decisions to ensure public order and to strengthen law enforcement," said Azyumardi Azra, deputy secretary to Vice President Jusuf Kalla.

The result of the government's Coordinative Council for Monitoring Sects meeting on Jan. 15, for example, allows Jemaah Ahmadiyah Indonesia three months in which to prove that their 12 statements regarding faith and social values are not contradictory to Islamic values.

The government's decision ran counter to the MUI's calls for the dissolution of Ahmadiyah. "Islamic organizations should respect the 12 Ahmadiyah statements and stop the attacks on the group," Azyumardi told The Jakarta Post.

The MUI has rejected Ahmadiyah's statements and demanded that they declare that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyah group, was not the last prophet, but only "a teacher".

Azyumardi said tough law enforcement and measures to maintain public order were necessary to enable people to exercise their freedom of religion.

MUI deputy chairman Ma'aruf Amin said the council respected freedom of religion, but could not tolerate deviation from Islamic principles.

"Some rules applied will guarantee that freedom of religion does not violate the law; does not stain religion values; does not bother public order and peaceful life; and does not bother people's harmony," said Ma'aruf, the MUI's head of edicts.

He said that, in a departure from usual MUI procedure, the council did not conduct an investigation into Ahmadiyah before declaring it heretical.

"The Ahmadiyah group is an exception. We didn't have to do any investigating since the group has long been internationally known as a heretical Islamic sect," he told a discussion.

Abdul Muti, chairman of the Centre for Dialogue and Cooperation Among Civilizations, however, said that religion is a private area that should have guaranteed human rights. "Rules are supposed to guarantee freedom in faith, not limit it," he added.

Another Muslim scholar, Ridwan Hasjim, said Indonesia was still looking for an appropriate form of freedom of religion for the country.

"Previously, feudalism gave prerogative rights to some people to judge whether something was right or wrong," he said. "The harmony between communities before the country's reform process was only artificial. Conflicts and violations emerged in many places as the country's reform began," said Ridwan. (rff)

Sect monitoring board 'must be disbanded'

Jakarta Post - January 18, 2008

Jakarta – The government should dissolve its official body which is allowed to ban religious sects, because it has disrupted the country's legal system, human rights groups say.

They said the Coordinating Board for Mystical Beliefs (Bakor Pakem) served as a judicial forum which "overrides the role of the existing judicial institution" to enforce the law.

The board consists the Attorney General's Office, police, the National Intelligence Agency and the Religious Affairs Ministry.

"Bakor Pakem is the legacy of the New Order (regime) and should be disbanded because it has disrupted the integrated legal system," said a joint statement signed by the Human Rights Working Group and the Indonesian Legal Resource Center.

The statement, received by The Jakarta Post on Wednesday night, was issued in response to the board's decision on Ahmadiyah, which was declared a heretical Islamic sect by the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI).

The rights groups hailed the board's decision not to ban Ahmadiyah, but said the move showed a "clear intervention of the state into the freedom of religion" in Indonesia.

This was against the constitution, which guarantees religious freedom and the law which ratifies the international covenant on individuals' civilian and political rights, they said.

"Therefore, we urge the Indonesian President to dissolve Bakor Pakem and, in dealing with religious freedom, return the law enforcement role to the legal system," the statement said.

"We also urge the government to stop intervening in the religious affairs of its citizens."

Bakor Pakem coordinator Wisnu Subroto said Thursday the MUI "cannot dictate" the decisions his board makes on Islamic sects.

"MUI has authority to declare whether a group is deviant or not, based on Islamic principles, but the government (the board) will make its own decision whether to dissolve a group or not," he told the Post.

Wisnu, who is the deputy attorney general of intelligence, said the board gave Ahmadiyah three months to prove it was committed to its new stance that recognized Muhammad as the last prophet of Islam.

The MUI considered Ahmadiyah to be a deviant sect because it recognized its founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad as the last prophet. Bakor Pakem threatened to reverse the decision on Ahmadiyah should the group fail to commit to its declaration.

"We have given Ahmadiyah followers the opportunity to return to the right path, and their activities will be monitored and evaluated over the next three months," Wisnu said.

He said, however, the board would consider human rights and constitutional factors when making decisions on Ahmadiyah. "We can't just dissolve or ban something but we should have good reasons for doing so," he said.

Jakarta/urban life

Jakarta gets new military chief

Jakarta Post - January 23, 2008

Jakarta – Maj. Gen. Liliek AS Sumaryo handed over the Jakarta Military Commander baton to his successor, Maj. Gen. Johanes Suryo Prabowo, on Monday.

The ceremony was presided over by Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Agustadi Sasongko Purnomo.

Suryo Prabowo was previously the chief of the Bukit Barisan military command, which oversees North Sumatra, West Sumatra, Riau and the Riau islands.

In his speech, Liliek said Jakarta was prone to a range of conflicts and crimes. He also said annual flooding in the city could develop into a security threat if not immediately handled.

Agustadi said the new commander must be ready to back up police and the local administration in ensuring security as well as conducting humanitarian work.

"The new commander is expected to hand down harsh sanctions to soldiers involved in crimes as they taint the image of the Army," he said in his speech.

More stress lies ahead on Jakarta's streets

Jakarta Post - January 23, 2008

Mustaqim Adamrah, Jakarta – Motorists will continue to be frustrated on Jakarta's streets this year, with more vehicles to be sold but no new roads to be built, a discussion concluded Tuesday.

"Traffic jams in Jakarta will definitely be worse this year compared to last year," Tri Tjahjono from the Transportation Study Center at the University of Indonesia said during the discussion, which was organized by the Indonesian Transportation Society.

"We are not aware of any government plans to expand roads, while the number of vehicles sold in the capital increases every year," he said.

However, Tjahjono said he did not support road expansion plans as they offered "no sustainable solution" to the city's traffic chaos. He said one way to overcome traffic jams would be to improve the busway system.

"That is the only mass transportation system affordable and suitable enough for the administration in accordance with local and national regulations. And the administration needs to continue improving the system," he said.

He said a railway-based transportation system may also be an option in the future, but said more work was needed on the 2007 law on train services.

He suggested the administration develop a regulatory body to manage all road-based public transportation services in the capital, much like the body established to supervise state owned-toll road operator Jasa Marga.

On average, 269 cars and 1,235 motorcycles are sold each day in the capital, with vehicle numbers rising by 10 percent on average each year.

Jakarta's roadways – now equal to 40 square kilometers and expanding by no more than 0.1 percent every year – can accommodate only 0.01 percent of the total number of cars in the city at any one time, Jakarta Public Works Agency head Wisnu Subagya Yusuf said.

Tjahjono said the only benefit to come out of worsening traffic jams was that there would be fewer road fatalities in the city. "Traffic jams force motorists to lower their speed," he said.

However, Hero Sutomo, the director of the Center for Transportation and Logistics Studies at Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University, said there would be more fatalities involving motorcyclists in Jakarta this year. "The number of motorcyclist fatalities in Jakarta is expected to rise by 10 percent," he said.

Jakarta saw 508 deaths from 4,466 accidents in 2007, higher than the 290 deaths and 3,098 accidents recorded in 2006, according to Jakarta Police statistics.

"Actually, if drivers lower their speed by 10 kilometers per hour it can reduce their risk of having an accident by 20 to 25 percent," Heru said.

Solidarity, friendship arise after eviction

Jakarta Post - January 20, 2008

Jakarta – The spirit of solidarity lingers around Jl. Barito, South Jakarta, in the wake of the eviction that demolished 107 kiosks of hundreds of vendors.

Many flowers and fish vendors, together with residents, public figures and activists, could be seen Saturday gathered in a tent they set up in an open yard of a restaurant across from the wrecked kiosks. The vendors said the eviction did not weaken them but made them stronger and gave them a chance to learn about friendship.

"We are surprised to see many people lend us their support during these hard times," Eddy, a 50-year-old florist said.

Yohanes Penginjil Church, which is located in front of the old Barito market location, for example, helped the vendors with food supplies.

"Some residents also sent us food, while vendors from other markets like those in Blok M (in South Jakarta) stopped by and helped us with anything they could do," Eddy told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

Another vendor, Yudhistira, echoed Eddy, saying that support from the public had been great.

"Some building owners in nearby areas helped us with providing spaces to temporarily store (our) belongings," he told the Post. "Some also lent us their cars and trucks to relocate our things."

He said the National Commission on Human Rights sent their representatives to "guard" the coordinating tent, in case the city administration decided to remove it.

The vendors, Eddy said, had discussed finding a new temporary location to continue their businesses. "But one thing is for sure, all of us have decided not to move to the new kiosks in Radio Dalam market (in South Jakarta), no matter what happens," he said.

He said the decision was taken to show the government the vendors were still standing their ground. "We realize our chances of reclaiming our business location are small, but we want to show the government that we have not lost the battle yet," Eddy, who started the flower business in the area 27 years ago, said.

Despite the widespread news about the eviction, he said that some people still came to the Barito area to order flowers. "But I could not accept all the orders and I handed them over to florists in other areas," he said. (dia)

Economy & investment

Government prepares in anticipation of US recession

Jakarta Post - January 23, 2008

Jakarta – Against the backdrop of a possible US recession, which has sent stock markets across the globe tumbling, the government is preparing measures to safeguard the country's economic stability.

"With this situation, the indicators in the state budget, and for economic growth and stability have changed drastically. Furthermore, we can almost be sure that there will be a US recession as we see the ongoing prospects," Coordinating Minister for the Economy Boediono said after a meeting with other top government officials.

Analysts have predicted that the United States, the largest economic power in the world, may suffer a recession triggered by housing and credit woes that would hurt the country's demand for imports. "We will safeguard the state budget as the country's economic anchor to anticipate this situation," Boediono said.

The rupiah fell to Rp 9,475 against the US dollar from Rp 9,460 the previous day. Meanwhile, the Jakarta Composite Index fell the most in five years by 7.7 percent to close at 2,294.52, following falls in other markets in the world.

Other Asian countries' stock markets also suffered a decline. The stock index in Hong Kong dropped 8.7 percent, South Korea 4.4 percent, Shanghai 7 percent, Tokyo 5.7 percent and India 6.12 percent, after it was shut down temporarily.

"At present, the world's economy is facing uncertainty," said Boediono. "However, if we can maintain our efforts to develop infrastructure projects and improve the country's investment climate, I believe our economy will remain resilient."

The government, he said, would focus on developing infrastructure and stabilizing the prices of staple foodstuffs at home to help keep the economy growing.

Infrastructure development is an essential factor for economic growth as it helps to reduce costs, while surging prices of staple foods will affect the inflation rate and eventually people's purchasing power.

Boediono was however upbeat that Indonesia would only be slightly affected by the US recession as the price of the country's top commodities, including those from the energy, agriculture and mining sectors, kept increasing due to high global demand.

Similar optimism is also shared by Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who said that the government would maintain the budget deficit at 1.7 percent of the gross domestic product, or Rp 74 trillion.

"The government will seek more revenue from the oil and gas sector, commodity exports and state-owned enterprise profits, as well as tax and non-tax incomes, to cover the deficit," she said.

Mulyani said the government this year had also allocated Rp 75.5 trillion to subsidize the energy sector and Rp 22.2 trillion to other sectors. (adt)

House mulls shutting down oil, gas regulators

Jakarta Post - January 23, 2008

Ika Krismantari, Jakarta – The House of Representatives is weighing over the possible closure of upstream oil and gas regulator BPMigas and downstream regulator BPH Migas due to decaying administrative performance and failures to meet targets.

The deputy chairman of House commission VII overseeing energy and mineral resources, Sutan Batughana, said here Tuesday the commission would hold several discussions with oil and gas investors operating in Indonesia to hear their opinions on the regulators' performance to determine whether closure was necessary.

"We have received reports that the performance of these two bodies has worsened – for example, in the process of securing business permits – and we want to verify this with the business actors," Sutan said after the first closed meeting with oil and gas contractors Tuesday.

"Some have complained the process to secure approval from BPMigas for budget spending on exploration and exploitation activities (now takes longer than) when Pertamina controlled the sector, and that this has hampered our oil production," Sutan, who led the hearing, said.

He also referred to BPMigas' failure to increase the nation's oil production despite a sharp increase in recovery costs. He said the recovery costs repaid by the government to oil block contractors in recent years had continued to increase despite the decline in the country's oil production.

Figures from the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry show the amounts being paid out by the government under the cost recovery system surged from US$7.63 billion in 2005 to $9 billion in 2006, even though output declined during that period from 1.06 million barrels per day to 1.04 million barrels per day.

One rumor in circulation holds that after accusations of failing to do his job, BPMigas chairman Kardaya Warnika will be replaced by the current director of upstream oil and gas development at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, Priyono.

Lawmakers also discussed BPH Migas' failures in the distribution of oil and gas in the downstream sector, particularly kerosene, as it was now considered scarce in the market. "We may disband the body if it proves to be failing in guaranteeing supply for the public, because that's its job," Sutan said.

BPMigas and BPH Migas were formed as independent bodies in charge of regulating the oil and gas sector under the 2002 Oil and Gas Law, which liberalized the sector and ended state oil and gas company Pertamina's monopoly. The chairman and members of the two bodies are installed by the President with the consent of the legislative body.

Tuesday's meeting was attended by oil and gas companies Pertamina, Royal Dutch Shell and UK-based BP. In the next meeting, the commission will continue the hearing by summoning other oil and gas companies.

If consumer economy is looking sluggish, it's because it is

Jakarta Post - January 22, 2008

Debnath Guharoy, Consultant – If the overall economy is growing at over 6 percent and if foreign investments are on the rise again why isn't the marketplace buoyant? Why is the consumer economy sluggish?

An immediately visible explanation is the impact of higher prices of essentials like rice and now soya beans, regardless of the reasons for those increases. But the bigger, invisible reason is the fact that the growth of the GDP isn't creating a surge in employment, nor increasing wages comparable to inflation.

Most of the growth in the economy is coming from the natural resource sectors, not labor-intensive businesses. The wealth which is being created is remaining in the hands of the affluent few and those who serve them. Starbucks is doing well. The tempe vendor is not. The Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Index is creeping around the 112 mark.

Even if the increases in the price of consumer essentials were contained at less than 10 percent each year, it would cause real pains to the overwhelming majority of the population.

No wonder the demand for consumer durables like refrigerators is flat. The number of people intending to buy a new motorcycle is stuck at 8 million. The number of people who are cellular subscribers is crawling at around 40 million even though there are millions more who would like to join the club.

For nine out of ten adults in Indonesia, life is always a struggle, financially. At the end of each month, after all the bills are paid, very little is left under the mattress.

Only one in five adults has a bank account and that number is not growing – in fact, it is dipping. Some 27 million Indonesians have bank accounts, about half of these bank with BRI. All the other banks compete for the patronage of the remaining 13 million.

These are Indonesia's financially fortunate minority. Among them are some 1.5 million people with a disposable income, the primary breadwinners for their families. Around one third of them could be deemed "affluent" by any yardstick. A tiny core is among the world's richest. That is the reality.

With the exception of BRI, not even the other state-owned banks are interested in the humble lives of most Indonesians. Their actions and initiatives seem to aim at competing for a share of the existing market, not expanding it.

The number of people with bank accounts is down, the number of people taking loans is also down, but plastic cards are up. The trouble is most bankers are more keen to embrace the "greed is good" credo made famous by Michael Douglas, than they are to emulate Mohamed Yunus' real-life success. There appears to be little shame for the subprime loans crisis that has triggered downward spirals across the world. Thousands of jobs have already gone, billions are being written-off in a mess that could end up costing more than a trillion dollars.

We've seen it all many times before. Who can forget the Internet bubble bursting in 2000? Yet it is the consumer who will pay the price for this callous greed, as usual, not the Asian sovereign funds bailing out these big banks. Fees and rates will go up, to be paid by those who can afford them, who in turn will cause the mark-up of products and services bought by even the poorest of the poor.

The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer. That gap between the rich and the poor is widening, across the world and in Indonesia.

If there is no surge in new wealth, and if it isn't distributed among more Indonesians, the country's retail banks will continue to seek profits in the relatively small consumer banking market that already exists.

It is no secret, however, that the backbone of any stable economy is small business and that the engine of any economy is consumer spending. Even in the US, more than 60 percent of all spending each year comes from consumers. A smiling George Bush riding an American-made lawnmower was urging US consumers last week to spend the checks they are soon going to receive in the mail, to trick the economy out of a recession.

Those checks will cost US taxpayers US$140 billion, adding to record deficits. There are no guarantees the stimulus will work, and as usual, the talk-show pundits sound clueless.

How many billion rupiah would it take, in the hands of thousands of budding small business owners, to create millions of new jobs across Indonesia? Not too many.

If each and every bank made it their mission to help build small business, not just big businesses, it would be to the mutual gain of all concerned. There is money to be made from those thousands of budding small business owners, as well as the millions of their prospective employees.

There's a universal truth which states that people with more money also borrow more, to build assets. It is time for Indonesia's retail bankers to work harder for their bonuses, and their country.

[The writer can be contacted at Debnath.Guharoy@roymorgan.com.]