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Indonesia News Digest 10 – March 9-15, 2008
Radio Netherlands - March 12, 2008
Ambon – A district court in Ambon, the capital of Indonesia's
Maluku province, has sentenced two members of the pro-
independence group RMS to 15 and 17 years in prison for "plotting
against the state".
Daniel Malawauw and Hermanus Daseran were arrested for
manufacturing South Maluku Republic flags. Police found 59
outlawed flags and materials to make more flags in Mr Malawauw's
home.
Last week, two Moluccans were arrested for unfurling Moluccan
flags during a visit by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono. Their lawyers say that armed separatists from Aceh and
Papua receive lighter sentences than Moluccans who unfurl
forbidden flags.
Jakarta Post - March 11, 2008
Nurni Sulaiman, Balikpapan – Security forces said they were
boosting border security around Berau and Nunukan, East
Kalimantan, in anticipation of an expected 300 Jamaah Islamiyah
members returning from combat training in the Philippines.
"The East Kalimantan Police have deployed a special team from the
anti-terror and intelligence units to anticipate members of the
terrorist network from entering the country," East Kalimantan
Police spokesman Sr. Comr. I Wayan Tjatra told The Jakarta Post
on Monday.
"They are positioned along the border and the police have
detected troubled spots, such as between Nunukan and Berau, and
will monitor them thoroughly," Wayan said.
In 2002, JI members connected to the Bali bombers, now facing
death row, were arrested in both cities, located along the border
with East Malaysia. Nunukan and Berau border immediately with
Tawau in the East Malaysian state of Sabah. Nunukan is the
closest regency and easily accessible by sea from the
Philippines.
"The sea route is usually traversed by the radical group members
returning from the Philippines, but we are guarding the areas
more tightly," Wayan said.
Other sea entry points to the country include Berau, Sebatik and
Tarakan, which are accessible from Mindanao in the Philippines
and from Semporna and Tawau in Malaysia.
Thanks to a lack of security, JI members can sail to Sulawesi,
Java and other cities in the country from Nunaken, Wayan said.
Police in North Sulawesi said they had intensified security in
Manado because of its accessibility from the Philippines.
Although it borders directly with the Philippines by sea, it
takes 20 to 28 hours by boat to reach Manado, which may lead JI
members to use the Tawau-Nunukan route, Wayan said.
Nunukan is not only rife with illegal entries but is also a human
trafficking and illegal arms route, he said.
Demos, actions, protests...
International Women's Day
Aceh
West Papua
Human rights/law
Environment/natural disasters
Health & education
War on corruption
Islam/religion
Elections/political parties
Jakarta/urban poor
Economy & investment
Opinion & analysis
News & issues
Indonesians jailed for 17 years for making flags
Security tightened for 'return' of JI
More training needed to prevent migrant workers abuse
Jakarta Post - March 10, 2008
Jakarta – A lack of knowledge about Saudi Arabia's legal system and culture is partly to blame for the imprisonment of many Indonesians working in the Islamic state, a non-governmental organization says.
Providing better education and information on this matter would help prevent Indonesian migrant workers from committing criminal offenses in Saudi Arabia, Women's Solidarity for Human Rights say.
In many cases, female Indonesians working in Saudi Arabia have been punished for crimes committed without realizing what they were doing was against the law.
The case of an Indonesian maid, Jul, was cited by the organization as an example. Jul was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and to be flogged 2,000 times, on charges of using magic on her employer, because she had an habit of collecting her hair and had made jamu (traditional herbal medicine) for her sick employer.
"Collecting hair was a tradition in her village, but this is regarded differently in Saudi Arabia," organization head Salma Safitri Rahayaan told The Jakarta Post after a discussion here last week. "Jul's effort to help her sick employer by serving her a herbal drink was also misinterpreted," Salma said.
The drink Jul served was in fact a mixture of tea, brown sugar and ginger, according to a report from the organization made available at the discussion.
A similar case also happened to an unnamed worker who was also accused of using magic after she was found keeping a picture of her sick employer. "She actually wanted to send the photograph to her parents in Indonesia to ask them to take it to a kyai (Islamic cleric) for a blessing prayer so her employer would get better soon," Salma said.
Salma said cultural differences were not the only issue Indonesian migrant workers needed to beware of, but also the Saudi legal system. Salma said as Saudi Arabia does not recognize the concept of rape, victims would be accused of committing sexual adultery or zina with their rapists.
"This can cause an extra burden for victims as they will also be sentenced to be flogged or imprisoned after they are raped," she said.
One rape victim was Wen, an Indonesian maid who was jailed for one year and flogged 100 strokes after she was raped by her employer – who got only three years in prison. Wen became pregnant after the incident and ironically was jailed during her pregnancy.
"I didn't understand anything they (judges) said during court sessions, and my lawyer didn't defend me. He only translated the court verdict for me and asked whether I would accept or refuse it and request an appeal," 33-year-old Wen told the Post.
"I decided to accept the verdict because I wanted everything to be finished, and others had said they got heavier penalties after appealing," she added. Wen said she was whipped at least 50 times a week, six months after she gave birth to her baby.
The rights group said there were at least 500 Indonesian female workers sent to Saudi's Al-Malash prison each month. It demanded that the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry, the Home Ministry and the Justice and Human Rights Ministry, take joint measures to prevent Indonesian maids from being imprisoned in Saudi Arabia.
"The most effective way is to send trainers to villages to educate villagers intending to work in Saudi Arabia about its culture and legal system," Salma said. Trainers could be former migrant workers, she added.
"They know better than others, so they could share their experiences." Saudi Arabia was employing some 186,715 migrant workers from Indonesia, 92 percent of which were female, according to data from the Migrant Worker Placement and Protection Agency (BP2TKI) recorded between January and August 2007. (dia)
| Demos, actions, protests... |
Tempo Interactive - March 13, 2008
Sofian, Jakarta – According to data released by the Metro Jaya regional police Traffic Management Center (TMC) today, as many as nine protest actions will enliven Jakarta on Thursday March 13.
The first demonstration, which will begin at around 7am, will be a solidarity action by the Business Competition Supervisory Commission (KPPU) that will take place in the vicinity of the Horse Statue roundabout in Central Jakarta.
The next action is being organised by the Preparatory Committee for the Formation of the Aceh Leuser Antara Province at the House of Representatives building at 9am. This will be followed by a protest by the United Indramayu Movement (GIB) at around 10am.
Three demonstrations will take place in front of the State Palace on Jl. Medan Merdeka Utara in Central Jakarta. The first protest will be by the Indonesian Student Circle (LMI) at 11am. The second action will be by the People in Motion (Gunter 49), also at 11am. The third will be by the Solidarity Network for the Families of Victims of Human Rights Violations (JSKKP-HAM), who will be holding a demonstration at 4pm.
In addition to these protest actions, the Try the Corrupters Peoples Movement (GERAK) will hold a demonstration at the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) offices at 11am. The group will be demanding that the KPK immediately indict and bring people involved in the Bank Indonesia Liquidity Support Scheme corruption case before the courts.
The Dawn Student Movement (GEMA FAJAR) and the Republic of Indonesia Proclamation Mandate Youth Holders (PPAP-RI) meanwhile will be demonstrating at the Jakarta City public hall and the Offices of Public Works at around 1pm local time.
[Translated by James Balowski.]
Detik.com - March 12, 2008
Iqbal Fadil, Jakarta – Those of you planning activities in the capital today should be on guard for traffic jams. Nine locations in the city will be enlivened by protest actions by a number of different groups. Where exactly? According to the Metro Jaya regional police Traffic Management Centre (TMC) the following locations will be hit by protests:
At around 8.30am the Confederation of Indonesian Trade Unions (KSPI) will be holding a protest action in front of the offices of the Ministry for Women's Empowerment on Jl. Medan Merdeka Barat in Central Jakarta. Around 500 people are expected to join the action demanding an end to discrimination and violence against women and calling on the government to ratify International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention No. 183 the Protection of Mothers.
Starting at 9am, the Jakarta NGO Communication Forum (FK-LSM Jakarta) will be holding a demonstration at three locations, the Attorney General's Office on Jl. Sisingamangaraja in South Jakarta, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) Building on Jl. Rasuna Said in Kuningan, also in South Jakarta, and in front of the State Palace on Jl. Medan Merdeka Utara in Central Jakarta. Around 300 people will take part in the action demanding an investigation into the Bank Indonesia Liquidity Support Scheme (BLBI) corruption case and questioning the handing of a corruption, collusion and nepotism case involving the procurement of radios at the Jakarta Regional Equipment Bureau.
Following on from this at 10am, former employees of the state- owned company PT Pertamina Shipping will hold a protest action at two locations, at the Pertamina Shipping offices on Jl. Yos Sudarso then at the Pertamina head office on Jl. Medan Merdeka Timur in Central Jakarta. Some 100 people are expected to take part in the action calling on the government to pay the employees outstanding wages.
Also at 10am, the Indonesian National Front for Labour Struggle (FNPBI) will be organising a demonstration in front of the Exxon Mobile offices at the BRI Building in the Benhil area in Central Jakarta. Around 100 people will take part in the action demanding the nationalisation of the mining industry for the welfare of the people. The protesters plan to gather first at the Benhil market.
Next, at 11am, the Try the Corrupters Peoples Movement (GERAK) will hold a protest action in front of the KPK building in Kuningan. The 200 or so people who will take part in the demonstration will be calling on the KPK to fully investigate a bribery scandal involving the BLBI corruption case.
Finally, at around 11am the Indonesian Student Circle (LMI) will hold a demonstration in front of the State Logistics Agency (Bulog) building on Jl. Gatot Subroto in South Jakarta. Around 100 people are expected to take part in the action opposing the importation of rice, as it will not resolve the problem of hunger.
The TMC has issued an appeal to the public passing through these locations to be on the alert and anticipate traffic jams. (bal/nwk)
[Translated by James Balowski.]
Temp Interactive - March 11, 2008
Muhammad Nur Rochmi, Jakarta – Three protest actions will be held in Jakarta on Tuesday March 11. Based on information from the Metro Jaya regional police Traffic Management Centre, the three separated actions will involve a total of around 500 people. The demonstrations are expected to create traffic jams.
It is hoped therefore that road users will take care if they pass through stretches of road where actions are taking place since protesters usually try to attract the attention of passing motorists resulting in traffic congestion.
The first action by around 500 people from the Social Organisation Group (BOM), is planned to take place between 8am to 3pm and will he held at five locations, the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) offices on Jl. Latuharhari in Central Jakarta, the House of Representatives Building on Jl. Gatot Subroto, also in Central Jakarta, the Attorney General's Office on Jl. Sisingamangaraja in South Jakarta, the national police headquarters and finally at the State Palace on Jl. Merdeka Utara in Central Jakarta.
Also at around the same time, an action by a group called the Anti-Gang Violence and Narcotics National Movement of Concern (GAPENTA) will be held in front of the State Palace. Finally, a protest will take place at 9am at the Komnas HAM offices and the office of Metro TV News in Kedoya, West Jakarta.
[Translated by James Balowski.]
Detik.com - March 10, 2008
Ken Yunita, Jakarta – Three protest actions will take place in Jakarta and neighboring Bekasi on Monday March 10. One of the demonstrations will be held at the Singapore Embassy on Jl. HR Rasuna Said in South Jakarta.
The demonstration the embassy is being organised by students from the Indonesian Muslim Students Action Front (KAMMI) and will start at 2pm.
Prior to this at 11am, a protest action will be held at the offices of the Finance Ministry on Jl. Lapangan Banteng in Central Jakarta. This demonstration is being organised by the Indonesian Environmental Forum (Walhi).
In addition to these two protests, at 10am an action will be held at the Bekasi City Regional House of Representatives. Also being organised by KAMMI, the protest will coincide with the inauguration of the new major of Bekasi. (ken/ken)
[Translated by James Balowski.]
| International Women's Day |
Jakarta Post - March 9, 2008
Lilian Budianto, Jakarta – Hanifah, 23, carried her two-year-old daughter to join a crowd at the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle here Saturday, as part of activities marking International Women's Day.
Holding her baby with her left hand, she waved a placard which read, "We can't afford to buy milk for our babies any more". The headscarf-clad woman stood silently, while hundreds of others took to the streets that rainy day, demanding better conditions for the Indonesia's women.
Hanifah, from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), said she used to feed her baby with unbranded condensed milk sold on the market for around Rp 5,000 a can. "It has been a year since I last fed Zahra with regular milk. Now with the soaring food prices, I can't afford it," said the mother of three young children while looking at her baby, Zahra.
The rally commenced around 10 a.m. with hundreds of women and a few men from different non-governmental organizations, led by the Women's Participation Institute (LP2).
Another large group of women from the Islamic-based PKS arrived later at the traffic circle and mingled with the first group.
The two groups raised similar issues, aimed generally at raising awareness of the urgent need for state institutions to empower women and adopt women-friendly policies.
Such policies should include allowing low-income-bracket families to buy staple food at affordable prices and receive free and appropriate health care access, they said.
The issue of food price hikes has affected women more than anyone else in a family, a volunteer for Women's Participation Institute, Endang Setiawati, told The Jakarta Post at the rally.
"A typical Indonesian family sees the father as the breadwinner and a mother as the homemaker," she said.
"When food prices are skyrocketing, often followed with the increase in prices of other daily needs, women are usually the first in the family to be pushed to the edge, and get forced to deal with the change with any means possible."
Nuraini, a social worker with the Indonesian Democratic Srikandi non-governmental organization, said women were usually the first victims of the cruelty of poverty, before it affects men.
She cited a typical example of a poor family who would prioritize sending their children to school, despite life's hardships.
"While a woman is the center of a family with the responsibility of raising children, many people have disregarded this role by charging women with less-favorable positions."
Nuraini said women often faced domestic violence and poor reproductive health care.
"How can we expect to become a nation with a bright future if we fail to respect women," she said. "The government must empower women if they hope to see a better future for the nation as a whole."
PKS women's affairs division chief Ledia Hanifa said more women's participation in politics was necessary to ensure the government gave priority to the enactment of policies favoring women.
"The government will neglect to consider the urgent need to empower women if there are not enough women in government and the House of Representatives," Ledia said during the rally.
Ledia hailed a recently endorsed law on political parties, which obliges all parties to set aside a 30 percent quota for women to contest seats in the House, but doubts it will create lasting change.
The electoral system, she said, did not oblige parties to put female candidates at the top of their candidate lists. As a result, female candidates often lost to male counterparts, Ledia said.
In the 2004 election, she said, 42 percent of PKS candidates nominated were female but only 6 percent (three women) managed to gain house seats.
Kompas - March 9, 2008
Jakarta – The commemoration of International Women's Day (IWD) was marked by the accumulation of bitter gifts in the form of the soaring price of basic commodities and soybean, the bacteria infection of powdered milk products and the high cost of education and healthcare. All of which has been added to the long list of violations against women in Indonesia.
A series of peaceful actions took place in various cities in Indonesia throughout Saturday March 8 articulating demands related to the situation facing women in Indonesia today. Many of the demands were also related to recent incidents involving the tragic death of mothers and children due to hunger or desperate mothers killing themselves and their children because of poverty, as well as the death of Indonesian women migrant workers employed overseas.
Rallying at the Hotel Indonesia roundabout in Central Jakarta, hundreds of women called for a reduction in the price of basic commodities and the eradication of poverty. "We are calling for more women who side with prosperity to enter the political field, because the root of all of these problems are political policies", said Nuraini from the group Indonesian Heroines of Democracy (SDI).
Also at the Hotel Indonesia, activists from the Workers Challenge Alliance (ABM) and Free Women (Perempuan Mahardika) took up the issue of workers rights. The National Awakening Women's Movement (PPKB) focused on the issue of women migrant workers, which was linked to the weakening of the spirit of nationalism. "Government officials panic when the Papuan flag is raised, the government becomes angry when photographs of the head of state are burnt by demonstrators. The irony is that there is no concern for the women and their children who are dying of hunger. Government officials' feelings of nationalism are not troubled when our women migrant workers are abused and mistreated in other countries", the group said in a press release signed by PPKB general chairperson Badriyah Fayumi.
Demands for justice for migrant workers was also articulated by Migrant Care executive director Anis Hidayah. The organisation called for migrant domestic workers to be acknowledged as formal workers and protected by the law as well as urging the government to produce bilateral and regional regulations that protect Indonesian migrant workers.
A press release by the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development signed by Dian Kartika Sari and Wahyu Susilo called for the fulfillment of the right to adequate food, an end to the trade liberalisation of basic foods, an end to the commodification of women in the placement of migrant workers and an end to all forms of forced evictions.
In the Central Java provincial capital of Semarang, the Network for the Protection of Women and Children (JPPA) urged the government to pay attention to women's reproductive healthcare.
IWD was originally proposed by Clara Zetkin, a women socialist from Germany to commemorate a strike by garment workers in the United States on March 8, 1857. IWD, which was proclaimed to commemorate the women's rights movement, was first celebrated in 1911. In Indonesia it only began to be commemorated again after the collapse of late President Suharto's New Order regime. (MH/A03/NMP)
[Translated by James Balowski.]
| Aceh |
Jakarta Post - March 13, 2008
Nani Afrida, Banda Aceh – A score of protesters gathered at the offices of the Aceh-Nias Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency (BRR) here Tuesday to demand money to rebuild their homes.
They accused the agency, whose mandate ends in 2009, of failing to disburse funds promised to them so they could rebuild homes destroyed by the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami. The victims said they had been waiting for three years but had yet to receive any money.
In a related development, Greenomics Indonesia criticized the BRR for seeking to revise its disaster rehabilitation master plan, part of a 2005 presidential directive.
Hanifah, a protester, said the BRR had originally promised Rp 15 million in rehabilitation funds for each home destroyed in her regency, Pidie. She said the sum had later been reduced to Rp 2.5 million. "This doesn't make sense. How can we rebuild with Rp 2.5 million with the soaring prices of construction materials?"
Yusdawati, another protester, asked why the reconstruction agency had given homes to Acehnese people who were not affected by the disaster. "Many residents of Keude Panteraja village have received houses as aid from the government although their homes were not destroyed by the tsunami."
Wisnusubroto, a BRR staff member who met with the protesters, said the amount of financial assistance for the reconstruction program was based of assessments by the BRR supervisory and steering bodies, with "informal representation" from the victims.
He said, "Two years ago, we set Rp 15 million (as the amount) for rebuilding damaged houses." However, he failed to provide further clarification.
Greenomics executive director Elfian Effendi said an attempt to amend policies guiding the reconstruction could be perceived as a BRR attempt to hide its poor performance from donor countries and the public.
Elfian said there was no good reason to change the 2005 regulation after the fact and that the move could be used to justify BRR projects that were wasteful or not related to reconstruction.
"The Aceh government and the provincial legislative council should prevent the BRR from revising the master plan, since it could be used to change (the appearance of) poor performance," he said in Jakarta on Wednesday.
According to Elfian, the master plan worked well enough from 2004 throughout 2009. He said changes in BRR performance were preferable to changes in the master plan.
Greenomics called on the Supreme Audit Agency to audit BRR's finance performance to evaluate whether rehabilitation and reconstruction work has been done in line with the master plan.
He said donor countries might also recruit an independent auditor to check the financial performance of the BRR and other Indonesian and foreign parties responsible for the reconstruction.
He said he feared the proposed review was linked to the end of the agency's mandate in 2009.
"If the regulation is revised, the BRR will have no obligation to account for its poor performance and (will simply) hand over its unfinished projects to the Aceh government."
Jakarta Post - March 12, 2008
Nani Afrida, Banda Aceh – An American freelance journalist believed to be linked with the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) has been deported from Aceh after attempting to enter the province on Feb. 8.
It marks the fifth deportation for 50-year-old Willian Nessen since he was first barred from entering the once-restive province in 2003. Nessen's latest deportation followed a two-day stay in Banda Aceh at the invitation of Aceh Governor Irwandi Yusuf.
Nessen questioned his deportation, saying he came to Aceh at the governor's invitation. "I am here at the invitation of Aceh Governor Irwandi Yusuf, and I will accept any decision made by Irwandi," he said at the Medan city airport, North Sumatra, moments before his deportation.
Nessen was barred from entering Aceh following his release from a Banda Aceh prison in 2003. He was jailed by the former military government after allegedly being found at a GAM hideout in the province.
During a previous visit to the province, he produced a documentary film Black Road portraying GAM's struggle against the Indonesian Military.
"I came here to help Irwandi and the Aceh economic recovery, and they react like there's still a war here," Nessen told The Jakarta Post. He said he had come to Aceh to encourage sugar imports from India and to export betel nuts to New Delhi.
Governor Irwandi said he regretted the central government's decision to deport Nessen. "It is a strong slap from the central government," he said.
He said he had invited the American to visit the province after personally checking Nessen's status at the local immigration office and finding him to be no longer prohibited from entering the country.
Head of the local immigration office Septiawan said Nessen's deportation was justified by an extension of the initial prohibition to the end of February 2008.
He also said he had not known of the extension at the time of Nessen's arrival, which was why he had not put the American's name on the black list at immigration.
"We received the letter on Nessen's black listing from the central government on Saturday night and Nessen came in on Saturday morning," he said, adding that Nessen stayed in the city for two days before his repatriation through Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday.
| West Papua |
ABC News online - March 13, 2008
Indonesian police have arrested 11 people in Papua for raising the Morning Star flag.
Police broke up a rally in the west of the province when demonstrators held the banned flag aloft and called for a referendum on Papua's future.
The demonstrators could be charged with promoting separatism. Police have rejected claims that they beat several of the demonstrators.
The Morning Star flag is a symbol of the Papuan independence movement and was the official flag of West Papua when it was under UN control in the 1960's.
Cenderawasih Post - March 13, 2008
Jayapura – The controversial issues of using separatist symbols such as the morning star flag on any accessories has become one of Governor Suebu's concerns. According to the governor, the handling of the people's use of the separatist's symbols should be dealt persuasively and not repressively.
Governor Suebu spoke to journalists at a coffee morning in the Governor's Palace on Saturday (8/3/08). He said, "for instance, if you met any elder women holding bags that have a Morning Star flag on them you should not arrest them. What we need to keep in mind is to have a symbol which is officially recognised by regional law.
The governor said that Law no 77 year 2007 is a general law and applies nationally and not exclusively for Papua and it says that any regional symbols and regional songs must not be similar to separatist's symbols. The governor added, "Solution to Papuan issues must be dealt with persuasively and not by using any repressive ways because using repression means that until the end of the world, Papuan issues never be solved".
Governor Suebu said that this was one of the results of his meeting with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta last Tuesday (4th March).
Antara News - March 13, 2008
Timika, Papua – Four Australian military attaches arrived at the Mimika district town of Timika on Wednesday for a two-day working visit in Indonesia's easternmost province of Papua.
The four Australian military officials led by Colonel Raymond Presson Wednesday met Mimika District Military Commander Lt Col Trie Soeseno and Timika Military Air Base Commander Lt Col Bambang Triono.
On Thursday morning, they would visit PT Freeport Indonesia's gold and cooper mining area at Grasberg in Tembagapura before returning to Jakarta on Friday.
Speaking to Antara News here on Wednesday, Raymond Press said Australia fully supported Indonesian sovereignty in Papua. He said the Indonesian government's policies in Papua such as the granting of special autonomy appeared to be working well.
"Australia really believes the systems being developed by the Indonesian government in Papua such as special autonomy are working well," Raymond Press said.
Commenting on military cooperation, Press said Indonesia and Australia were continuing to maintain security in their territorial air space by increasing joint exercises of their air forces.
He said the two countries' air forces had often conducted joint exercises such as the 'Rajawali Ausindo' recently held in Australia. Besides the Rejawali Ausindo exercise, Indonesia and Australia also conducted joint exercises such as Camar Ausindo and Elang Ausindo and exchanged air force officers.
"Relations between the Indonesian and Australian air forces are very good, and we will continue to improve exchange of information in an effort to make the ties even better in the future," Press said.
Meanwhile, Timika Military Air Base Commander Lt Col Bambang Triono said he was delighted by the visit of the Australian defense attaches.
"I must say, their visit is a great honor to us for in fact the Timika military air base is a strategic place to maintain our air space security," Triono said.
He added that as close neighbors Indonesia and Australia should be more open for good cooperation in the transfer of technology, exchange of information, and knowledge on aerospace affairs.
Jakarta Post - March 12, 2008
Vidhyandika Perkasa, Jakarta – No significant progress has eventuated in Papua as far as sociocultural, political and economic dimensions are concerned.
Conventional issues persist: the weak implementation of special autonomy, which has failed to improve local socioeconomic conditions; the controversial debate and confusion in implementing the "legal status" of the new province of West Papua; unresolved and unaddressed human rights violations and discrimination among indigenous people; and the growing and uncontrolled demands for area expansions throughout the province.
National and political elites seem preoccupied with solving macro political and legal issues and so neglect the core problem: identifying why special autonomy (still seen as the most "promising" panacea for the complex Papua problems) has failed to improve Papuans' wellbeing. There are various possible approaches to trying to detect why the ill-fated special autonomy has not performed as effectively as planned.
Weak governance is one significant factor in the poor implementation of special autonomy. Governance at nearly all levels in Papua is generally quite poor, even downright awful. With weak governance there is no clear popular representation in policy-making processes and no efficient, open and accountable government.
Cultural and traditional factors are unquestionably important contributors to weak governance. The magnitude of the influence of traditional culture and values on behavior is quite visible in Papua. Weak governance is about weak leadership. There are several kinds of traditional leadership in Papua: Big Man, Ondoafi (based on ascription), Kingdom and Mixed Leadership. Big Man leadership, for example, which is typical in the Highlands, stresses the leader's capacity to "manipulate" his surroundings and natural resources for his own benefit. One informant argued this capacity for manipulation has negative connotations because the leader is not bound to follow any laws or regulations. Big Man leadership tends also to be authoritarian and autonomous, as the leader does not acknowledge division of labor among his constituents.
Under decentralization and special autonomy, tribal leaders are vying for positions in the modern bureaucracy. Ironically, the formally elected leaders are engaged in traditional politics. In most cases of tribal war, cycles of revenge and hatred are dragged into the politics of modern governance. The influence of this is evident in inefficient bureaucracy, corruption, nepotism and ineffective governance. Therefore, it is crucial to highlight the traditional patterns of behavior, patterns of exercising power and patterns of leadership that might manifest in the modern governance system.
Research by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in 2007, supported by the Australia-Indonesia Governance Research Partnership (AIGRP), discovered the significant factors that contribute to weak governance in Wamena include the influence of "primordialism", ethnic exclusivism and a culture of framing political allegiances and patterns of conflict.
Those factors have impeded the establishment of good governance. To be more specific, the influence of ethnic and religious considerations in bureaucratic appointments and political representation is one expression of traditional values in local government.
It is also evident in elected leaders' obligation to reward their supporters in order to maintain popular support. In many respects, this pattern of patronage is expected of traditional leaders, but it becomes problematic when the funds allocated to fulfill these obligations are taken from the local government budget or special autonomy funds.
Weak governance is not solely a matter of traditional patterns of behavior in the modern governance system but also results from a lack of human resources. The research found inadequate formal education and professional experience and training among government officials and political representatives, especially in policy making and program implementation. Bureaucratic and political processes do not support the selection and deployment of the most qualified people to senior positions. Appointments are often made for reasons of political, ethnic or religious affiliation rather than on merit, resulting in a lack of leadership skills in local government. In addition, the phenomenon of "the wrong man in the wrong position" or a mismatch of qualifications, experience and position is widespread.
Furthermore, very rapid social change since the first contact just half a century ago has led to what might be described as "culture shock", "distortion" or "contamination". Some of this transformation has manifested itself in the ways leadership has developed in the local government system, which has had access to greatly increased revenues through Special Autonomy.
This has led to some erosion of traditional values. For example, "deliberation" (musyawarah) is currently used to secure personal or group interests for economic objectives. In addition, senior government officials have had access to resources that have enabled more luxurious and hedonistic lifestyles, resulting in a change in the relationship between the government and the community.
Finally, the lack of synergy among local government, NGOs and the business community in supporting democracy and good governance also contributes to weak governance.
Given the complexity of the problems that contribute to weak governance in Papua, the policy recommendations are as follows.
First, there needs to be ongoing attention or research in trying to determine the root causes of weak governance in Papua, taking into account the complexity and magnitude of the cultural dimensions.
I object to the view that all traditional leadership values are "bad". CSIS discovered positive local wisdom that could support good governance. These positive values need to be built upon in concrete policy interventions. In addition, there needs to be a mechanism to counter or overcome the negative effect of traditional leadership in the modern government system.
Second, there needs to be improvement in the recruitment and selection processes within the bureaucracy and the political parties, regulated through bylaws (Perda).
The aim of such regulations would be to improve the professional and educational standards of senior officials, members of the executive and political representatives.
The third recommendation is to have professional development programs for civil servants in local government.
Finally, a key factor in the development of democratic governance and good governance is a strong civil society.
[The author is a researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He obtained his PhD in anthropology from Monash University, Australia.]
Jakarta Post - March 10, 2008
Nethy Dharma Somba, Jayapura – A women's alliance has called the campaign against HIV/AIDS infection in Papua ineffective, citing the steep rise in cases in the last several years.
A number of Papuan women of the Women's Challenge Alliance held a demonstration to observe World Women's Day in Abepura on Saturday.
"We are disappointed with the current ineffective handling of HIV/AIDS infection in Papua... which has spent too much money (on education and campaigns) while not providing care, support and treatment," said Fauzia Hayati Raharawin who coordinated the demonstration.
She said the efforts needed immediate review because more and more people had been infected and those with HIV/AIDS had received discriminatory treatment from medical workers.
"Anti-AIDS pamphlets and banners are found almost in all public places. Seminars and workshops are held and the information campaign has also been intensive in local media but the number of people with HIV/AIDS continues to increase," she said.
There are currently 90,000-130,000 people with HIV/AIDS in the province, a drastic increase from 4,500 cases in September 2004.
Fauzia condemned the discriminative treatment of people with HIV/AIDS, saying many health workers had rejected treating them.
The demonstration ended after protesters placed a flower wreath on a tomb in a public cemetery, saying it was to express their condolences for the death of the local AIDS prevention committee (KPAD), which they said had spent so much money making pamphlets, leaflets and banners and holding workshops.
The committee held the Papua Condom Bi-week (PKP) 2008 throughout the province last month to combat the sharp rise in HIV/AIDS cases. The campaign, from Feb. 2 to 16, aimed to provide HIV/AIDS education and called on people to practice safe sex.
"The program was conducted with film presentations and public discussion at Sentani Airport, Phraa market and Sentani terminal as well as on a PT. Pelni ship which sailed to certain areas," Dewi Wulandari, spokesperson for KPA Papua, said Friday.
Jakarta Post - March 9, 2008
Nethy Dharma Somba, Jayapura – Growing demands for a self- determination referendum show the Papuan people are fed up with corruption caused by the province's "special autonomy" status, an academic and informal leader said.
Muhammad Musa'ad, a legal expert from Cenderawasih University, said most Papuan people believed special autonomy had not addressed fundamental problems in the province.
"Seven years after special autonomy, no significant changes have been made and even worse, the living standards of Papuan people have fallen to the lowest level, with most being denied access to health, education and employment," he told The Jakarta Post here on Thursday.
Musa'ad, who is a member of the assistance team for special autonomy, said Papuans had been supportive of the law when it was launched in 2001.
"But, seven years into its implementation, their hope of affordable houses, free schooling and healthcare with more hospitals has not been made a reality," Musa'ad said.
"In reality, Papua is in a paradoxical situation. The province has a huge sum of special autonomy funds but most people are getting poorer. Most can no longer afford education and health service and medicine," he said. His comments echo those of Governor Bas Suebu, who addressed local officials during a recent work meeting attended by Vice President Jusuf Kalla.
Calling for local wisdom rather than Jakarta's policy, Kalla asked local governments to spend the province's surplus of Rp 21 trillion (US$2 billion) to finance development programs.
The resource-rich province has brought in Rp 21 trillion for Papua and Rp 8 trillion for West Papua this fiscal year, a significant increase from past years, Rp 3.6 trillion in 2006, Rp 2.7 trillion in 2005, Rp 2.45 trillion in 2004, Rp 2.43 trillion in 2003, Rp 2.04 trillion in 2002 and Rp 590 billion in 2001.
Jayapura has been shaken recently by waves of student demonstrations demanding the province abandon special autonomy, dissolve the Papuan People's Assembly (MRP) and hold a referendum to determine the province's future.
Deputy chairman of the Papuan Tribal Council (DAP) Fadal Alhamid accused the government of viewing special autonomy as a money- making exercise.
The funds allocated after the 2001 special autonomy law was introduced has mostly gone into local officials' pockets and the bureaucracy, with only a small portion being used to build infrastructure, Fadal said.
"This has been demonstrated by officials who frequently go out of the province and have luxury houses and cars," he said.
Fadal said the dispute over the formation of West Papua province remained a conflict between the two provincial governments in Papua and had nothing to do with the people.
"The formation of many more provinces in Papua will not create change unless elite locals work harder and the development program is oriented to the poor, the sick and the uneducated," he said.
Musa'ad and Alhamid agreed both Jakarta and the local government should reconcile with the Papuan people to gain their confidence, and suspend the planned formation of four new provinces.
Both called for a revision of the current policy while respecting the rights of the Papuan people.
| Human rights/law |
Jakarta Post - March 15, 2008
Tony Hotland, Jakarta – The United Nations Human Rights Council will review the protection of human rights in Indonesia next month, as part of the council's first-ever Universal Periodic Review, Foreign Ministry spokesman Kristiarto Soeryo Legowo said Friday.
"As one of the council's elected members, Indonesia is in the first batch for the review commencing April 9," he said. All 192 UN members will undergo the review.
Indonesia was elected to the council in May 2007 along with 13 other countries. The council was established in March 2006.
Also scheduled to undergo the review in April are Bahrain, Ecuador, Tunisia, Morocco, Finland, United Kingdom, India, Brazil, the Philippines, Algeria, Poland, the Netherlands, South Africa, Czech Republic and Argentina.
Kristiarto said each country would be reviewed by the council's president, currently Romania, and rapporteurs or troikas consisting of three countries, each from a different region. Indonesia will be scrutinized by Jordan, Canada and Djibouti. Following the review, recommendations will be made.
"We have submitted documents and reports as review materials, listing what we've done to implement the provisions in six UN rights conventions we have ratified," said Kristiarto.
The six are the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Convention against Torture, Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
"The documents also include our responses to visits by special rapporteurs to Indonesia," Kristiarto said, adding Indonesia had had 11 such visits. Indonesia hosted visits last year by rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak and rapporteur on human rights defenders Hina Jilani.
The 2007 annual report by the National Commission on Human Rights concluded the government had not fully delivered the reforms and legal system required by the various rights instruments it had ratified. The commission also highlighted several violent acts by state officers, vigilantism by radical groups, disruption to religious freedom and widespread evictions.
The government has a five-year plan on human rights, signed by former president Megawati Soekarnoputri in May 2004. The plan mandates the creation of a national committee, responsible directly to the president, to carry out the provisions.
Activities in the plan include ratification of international rights instruments, reconciliation of contradictory legislation, dissemination of rights regulations and application of rights norms.
Jakarta Post - March 13, 2008
Tony Hotland, Jakarta – Indonesia has seen positive human rights developments in the last year but a lack of political will has prevented accountability for rights abuses in the past, a US report has concluded.
"The government respected the human rights of its citizens; however, weak legal institutions, limited resources, and insufficient political will prevented accountability for serious abuses that occurred in the past," the US State Department said in its annual human rights report.
Released Tuesday (Wednesday in Jakarta), the report praised developments such as the prosecution of the 2004 murder of rights activist Munir Thalib, the signing of an anti-trafficking bill and the handling of large-scale rallies by the police without lethal force.
The report said problems in the last year included killings by security forces, vigilantism, harsh prison conditions, impunity, corruption in the judicial system, interference with freedom of religion, instances of violence and sexual abuse against women and children and failure to enforce labor standards and worker rights.
M. Ridha Saleh, a deputy of the Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), said the commission's annual report had reached similar conclusions. "The government was negligent on the economic, social and cultural rights of its citizens, which led to abuses of political rights," he said.
He said Komnas HAM was probing various rights cases from 1965 to 1966 and mysterious shootings in the 1980s, all under the administration of the late president Soeharto.
Wiwiek Setyawati, the director of human rights and humanity at the Foreign Ministry, said the ministry would respond only to a report issued by the UN, not a country.
"But in general, we realize we're not perfect yet and we're going in that direction. We ratify conventions, report to the UN, review the implementation. "We know there are some unresolved issues in the past, but we can't hang on to the past all the time," she said.
The US report noted there were no known developments regarding the 1998 killing of four students at Trisakti University and nine at Semanggi intersection and the 1999 killing of four students at Semanggi intersection.
Indonesia, it said, reported "little progress in accounting for persons who disappeared in previous years or in prosecuting those responsible for the disappearances".
The Indonesian government also "used its authority, and at times intimidation, to expropriate land for development projects without fair compensation".
The government also "generally viewed outside investigations or foreign criticism of its human rights record as interference in its internal affairs. The security forces and intelligence agencies tended to regard with suspicion foreign rights organizations".
The US, which annually releases its reports on human rights conditions in countries worldwide, has also been reproached for its own record. UN experts on torture criticized Washington on Tuesday for denying access to prisoners held by US troops in Iraq.
The US was lambasted in 2003 after leaked photos showed soldiers abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib detention facility and posing proudly with battered corpses and injured prisoners.
A UN panel on racism last week criticized Washington's extraordinary rendition practice, under which terrorism suspects taken into custody abroad have been transported to third countries where rights groups say they could face torture.
Jakarta Post - March 13, 2008
Indonesia welcomed Wednesday a report by Hina Jilani, the special representative of the UN secretary general on the situation of human rights defenders, and said the government was strengthening the network of rights defenders as part of the national blueprint on human rights.
Speaking in Geneva during the seventh session of the Human Rights Council, Indonesia said it was setting up commissions in 476 regencies and cities to carry out the blueprint, and was establishing a witness protection body.
Jilani visited Indonesia June 5-12 last year and went to the abuse-prone provinces of Nanggroe Aceh Darusalam and Papua. She said in her report that Indonesia had taken considerable measures to protect rights defenders, but noted a lack of coordination among rights commissions as well as resistance to changing attitudes toward the elimination of impunity were slowing down progress.
Jakarta Post - March 13, 2008
Jakarta, – The National Commission on Human Rights says acts of violence involving National Police remain frequent, despite the law enforcement agency's agreement to promote and protect human rights.
Other state institutions like the military and public order officers trailed far behind.
The report said police committed acts varying from violent arrests, abuse of power, molestation, rape and sexual harassment, to domestic violence, murder, evictions and corruption.
Commission deputy chairman M. Ridha Saleh said the rights body would meet National Police chief Gen. Sutanto to discuss the report.
"The meeting will be part of our efforts to prevent violence and seek a new cooperative approach with the police," Ridha told The Jakarta Post.
The commission, he said, had written to the police to initiate investigations into the cases. "The initial investigations will determine whether those violations can be classified as human rights abuses," Ridha said.
The commission will use the report to determine the tendencies and patterns of acts of violence, and to investigate motives behind them, Ridha said. "This will help us formulate recommendations for law enforcement agencies and internal regulations against offending parties," he said.
A former spokesperson for the National Police, Insp. Gen. Sisno Adiwinoto, asked the commission to differentiate between human rights violations and ordinary criminal cases.
"Don't mix the two up. Not all acts of violence can be classified as human rights abuses," said Sisno, who was installed as South Sulawesi Police chief last week. Sisno said human rights violations included war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity.
"So, if a police officer is accused of shooting the wrong person, it is a case of negligence and should be classified as a criminal matter, rather than a human rights violation," Sisno said.
The high number of cases of violence involving police officers, compared to the military and public order officers, does not necessarily mean the police is the most violent state institution, he said.
The commission report says the military was responsible for 18 cases of rights abuses, while four were linked to public order officers.
"It's not fair to say police committed more violations than public order forces. People should first compare the total number of public order officers to the number of police officers and calculate the ratio between the two," Sisno said.
He regretted the police were being associated with violence. "The police belong to the public. If the police need improvements, then let's work together for that," he said.
Indonesian Police Watch chairman Neta S. Pane said police needed to work harder to change their attitudes when dealing with the public in order to regain their trust. "Any efforts will be useless if police continue to resort to violence," Neta told the Post.
While human rights education has been introduced to the Police Academy, it had not been well implemented by officers in the field, he said.
"Police officers are taught about human rights, but they don't put this into practice because supervision from higher level officers has been weak," Neta said. (dia)
Associated Press - March 12, 2008
Zakki Hakim, Jakarta – Indonesia's Human Rights Commission has opened inquiries into mass killings and widespread rights abuses during the 32-year Suharto dictatorship, in an attempt to finally bring the perpetrators to justice.
Four teams have begun collecting evidence in the purge of communists during Suharto's rise to power in 1965, alleged atrocities by Indonesian soldiers in the remote Aceh and Papua regions and scores of killings and abductions blamed on security forces in the mid-1980s.
Suharto died in January at age 86 without having seen the inside of a courtroom, but "there are still so many people involved in the human rights violation cases that have remained untouched," commission member Ridha Saleh told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
The inquiries will be conducted by dozens of commission members and experts until May 17, Saleh said, but that period may be extended.
The commission, which has the power to investigate rights abuses but cannot issue arrest warrants, will present its findings to the Attorney General's office. The Attorney General could recommend that an ad hoc human rights court be formed to conduct criminal trials against individuals.
The House of Representatives and ultimately President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono would have to sign off on the creation of such a tribunal. Yudhoyono, a former military officer who rose through the ranks under Suharto, has rarely, if ever, mentioned the need to prosecute or even investigate abuses under the former dictator.
Efforts so far to prosecute abuses have failed largely because many of those implicated in the events are still in positions of power, critics say.
Suharto seized control of the military in a 1965 coup after which between 300,000 and 800,000 alleged communist sympathizers were killed. Up to 300,000 died during military operations against separatists in Papua, East Timor and Aceh.
Detik.com - March 11, 2008
M. Rizal Maslan, Jakarta – Cases of human rights violations committed by the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in the 1960s are still being neglected. Hundreds of people from anti-communist groups went to the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) today urging the commission not be used by the PKI, which they said was rising up again(1).
The protesters, who came from a number of mass organisations throughout Indonesia arrived in buses and private vehicles at the Komnas HAM offices on Jl. Latuharhary in the Central Jakarta area of Menteng at 10am on Tuesday March 11(2).
Represented at the protest were members of the Anti-Communist Front (FAKI), Indonesian Islamic Students (PII), the Association of Islamic Students (HMI), the 66 Generation (Angkatan '66), the Crush Communism and Liberalism Action Committee (KAGKL), the Lamongan Islamic Community Forum (FUI), the Madura Social Forum (FMM), the Bandung Anti-Communist Front (FAKI Bandung), the East Java Anti-Communist Front (FAKI Jatim) and the East Java Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI Jatim).
During the action they also brought red-and-white flags, the flags of their respective organisations as well as banners with messages such as, "Don't use Komnas HAM as a free ride for the PKI's come back", "The formation of Komnas HAM was funded from, by and for the people, not for the interests of the PKI" and "Communism on the rise. Get ready! Crush them!".
The group was prevented form entering the offices by scores of police from the Central Jakarta district police. After conducting a dialogue for several minutes, Komnas HAM finally agreed to meet with 50 representatives.
During the meeting, FAKI Jatim representative Arukat Djaswadi said that up until now Komnas HAM had failed to look into the fact that the PKI slaughtered people and committed human rights violations in East Java.
Djaswadi said he deplored the stand taken by Komnas HAM in deciding to form an ad hoc team to investigate cases of human rights violations in 1965, when the investigation should instead be focused on the PKI.
"So if it's going to be like this it would be better for Komnas HAM to just be disbanded. Komnas HAM has never looked into the fact that the East Java communities were the victims of the PKI's ferocity. Many kyai (Islamic clerics) were murdered. Many young people were killed then also", he said.
Komnas HAM however said it would not be influenced by protests related to the ad hoc team to investigate the 1965-66 massacres. "We will not be influenced and will not enter into a political debate over calls to revoke the Tap MPR(3) on communism or not. These [groups] arrival [here] will just be used as input for Komnas HAM to compliment its data", said Nurkholis, the head of the ad hoc investigation team.
With regard to accusation by the anti-communist community that certain members and the head of Komnas HAM, Ifdhal Kasim, are defenders of communist groups, Nurkholis declined to make any comment. "On this question, hopefully he (Ifdhal Kasim) will make a clarification, we will also take note of this and discuss it later", he said.
Notes:
1. The protest follows a decision by the National Human Rights Commission on February 27 to set up an ad hoc team (Tim Ad Hoc Kasus Pelanggaran 1965-1966 Komnas HAM) to investigate the 1965- 1966 massacre of 1 million or more PKI members and communist sympathisers when then Major General Suharto and the military seized power in 1965. An ad hoc team will also be established to investigate the "mysterious killings" of criminals in the 1980s.
2. According to the New Order dictatorship's version of history, on March 11, 1966, Indonesia's founding President Sukarno formally transferred power to Suharto by signing an order known as Supersemar. Sukarno loyalists maintain that the original document was simply an instruction to Suharto to use the armed forces to maintain security and end the massacres.
3. Provisional People's Consultative Assembly Decree Number XXV/1966 on the Dissolution of the Indonesian Communist Party and Prohibitions on Marxist, Leninist and Communist Teachings.
[Abridged translation by James Balowski from two articles in Detik.com on March 11.]
| Environment/natural disasters |
Jakarta Post - March 14, 2008
Lilian Budianto, Jakarta – The House unanimously refused on Thursday to endorse a bill that would see Indonesia ratify an ASEAN agreement to eradicate transboudary fire haze and smoke pollution.
The treaty binds signatory states to be proactive in tackling haze pollution from land and forest fires across their boundaries through strict regulations, heat-seeking satellites and better trained firefighters.
If Indonesia ratified the agreement, the government would have to amend many of its regulations on pollution by adding a clause on zero burning and controlled burning practices.
At a hearing with Forestry Minister M.S. Kaban and the House of Representatives commission VII overseeing environmental affairs, all factions rejected the bill.
Legislator Alvin Lie of the National Mandate Party (PAN) told the meeting ratification would only benefit other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and would undermine Indonesia's interests.
The agreement was signed in 2002 and came into effect a year later. The Philippines also chose not to ratify the agreement.
"Controlling haze pollution is as hard as controlling illegal logging, given the size of our country and its forests, and in the face of a limited number of local monitoring officials," Alvin said.
"While ASEAN members have pushed us to ratify the agreement, they did not take into consideration our demand to include provisions about transboundary illegal logging and illegal fishing, which have also been seriously plaguing our country."
Indonesia has been a main source of forest fires often sending haze pollution to neighboring countries. The Forestry Ministry recorded some 121,622 hot spots in 2006 and 27,247 in 2007, mainly in Sumatra and Kalimantan, and reported a total of 59.2 million hectares of degraded forests.
Legislator Nizar Dahlan of the Democracy Pioneer Star faction, grouping minor parties in the House, said the country should ratify the bill only if the ASEAN members agreed to cooperate in combating illegal logging.
"Any measures to control haze pollution should actually include efforts to combat illegal logging because they are two sides of the same coin," Nizar said. "We cannot control haze pollution if fellow countries do not formally agree to help us fight illegal logging."
Nizar said the country should still strive to control haze pollution even without ratifying the agreement. "I think we need not necessarily ratify the agreement because it is our responsibility to control fire haze. Without the agreement, the government has proved they managed to reduce the number of hot spots by more than 70 percent in 2007," he said.
Haze has been a chronic problem between Indonesia and its neighboring countries Malaysia and Singapore since the severe smoke from Indonesia's forest fires in 1997.
The two neighboring nations said the 1997 fires triggered breathing problems for more than 20 million people in the Southeast Asian region and the closure of major regional airports because of thick haze.
Malaysia and Singapore have made serious complaints and demanded Indonesia take stern measures against illegal burning of forests.
Indonesia blamed plantation companies and local residents for setting fires to forests mostly in Sumatra. Many Malaysian companies operating in forests were also accused of contributing to smoke across the ASEAN region.
Jakarta Post - March 13, 2008
Abdul Khalik, Jakarta – Most forest and land rehabilitation programs launched by the central government have failed to reduce deforestation because locals refuse to become involved, officials and activists said.
Head of Central Java's Wonosobo village, Kholiq Arif, said residents were more interested in protecting their interests rather than following the government's rehabilitation guidelines.
"The government's programs are simply dead," Kholiq told the seminar.
"Past experience shows if the locals follows what the government says, they will lose their income or their land for nothing."
The seminar was organized by USAID and the Environmental Service Programs (ESP), an international non-governmental organization focused on forest, land and water.
Imam Muhammad of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) Central Java chapter said most Central Java farmers who were NU members were disappointed with the government's rehabilitation and reforestation programs.
He said the government had not honored its promises and farmers were not paid after planting their land with seeds.
"We lost our time, money and land by joining the programs," he said.
Imam and Kholiq said the government should stop the programs and rechannel funds directly to people.
The Forestry Ministry said the government needed more than Rp 8 trillion (US$879.12 million) to rehabilitate two million hectares of forest in 2007.
Murniati, a researcher at the Research Center for Forest Development and Nature Conservation, said although the government planted many trees year after year, only a few survived.
"It's due to a lack of participation from the locals and the absence of programs after the plantating period," she said. "So, many trees just died."
Murniati said according to her research with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the government managed to plant trees across 72 percent of total damaged forests, but only 25 percent of the trees survived.
Abidah Billah Setyowaty of the ESP said based on his organization's experience in helping villagers across six provinces, locals could successfully "fix" their own land and forests at minimum cost and without the government's help.
Lawmaker and former environmental minister Sonny Keraf said participation from farmers and the private sector was the key to successful rehabilitation and reforestation programs.
Forestry Ministry's director for land and forest rehabilitation Djoko Winarno said there were not enough funds to realize the government's rehabilitation and reforestation programs and blamed a slow disbursement of money from the state budget.
"We need Rp 11 trillion for the rehabilitation of 1.7 hectares of forest in 2007, but we only have Rp 325 billion," he said. Some 1.08 million hectares of Indonesian forests are degraded each year, Djoko said.
Jakarta Post - March 11, 2008
Batam, Riau Islands – The manggrove forest along Nongsa Beach in Batam is reportedly being threatened by fuel waste dumped from foreign-flagged tankers in the Strait of Malacca.
Chairman of the Nongsa tourist resort, Djoko Pramono, said the crude oil waste was hurting tourism in the coastal area, as well as threatening the mangrove forest. He said large portions of the forest had already begun to die off as a result of the fuel waste.
Djoko urged Jakarta to step up its cooperation with Malaysia and Singapore not only to provide security in the strategic strait, but also to protect its environment
Riau Islands Governor Ismeth Abdullah said the government would set up nets and other equipment to prevent the fuel waste from reaching the mangrove forest.
| Health & education |
Jakarta Post - March 13, 2008
Jakarta – A number of regional governments have cut their HIV/AIDS budget allocation, despite a national commitment to raise more funds to fight the virus.
Secretary of the National AIDS Commission (KPA) Nafsiah Mboi said Wednesday 23 provincial governments had reduced their HIV budget by a total of Rp 5.72 billion – to be put toward regional election expenditure last year.
The budget cut may be insignificant, but Nafsiah said she feared a bigger part of HIV budgets would go to other institutions ahead of the 2009 elections.
"If regional elections can take money from HIV budgets, a bigger event like a national election could also see this happen," Nafsiah told a discussion at the State Minister of National Development Planning Office.
I Nyoman Kandun, general director of Epidemic Control and Environmental Sanitation at the Health Ministry said the ministerial office had slashed its budget for HIV/AIDS control by 20 percent last year.
"The reduction has caused some programs to run below our expectations," he said.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called for an increase in the state's budget for HIV/AIDS during a cabinet meeting in July last year.
The president's request, however, has fallen on deaf ears in some regions.
In Papua, for example, the provincial government allocated Rp 10 billion for its regional AIDS commission in 2007, but only 1 percent of the budget was realized.
The AIDS Commission said it needs more than Rp 1.5 trillion this year to deal with the virus, but the government has promised to provide Rp 1 trillion only. Most of the budget would be spent on prevention programs.
Nafsiah said the government did not consider HIV/AIDS a priority because the number of infected people remained small compared to patients of other diseases.
In December 2007 the Ministry of Health recorded 6,066 people with HIV and 11,141 with AIDS. Jakarta still tops the list due to the increasing number of infections among injection drug users (IDU).
But the government said it was most worried about Papua, where HIV is being contracted at a fast rate by low risk groups, particularly housewives. The commission estimated the number of people with HIV/AIDS would reach 400,000 in 2010 and one million in 2015 across the country.
To help overcome budget constraints, the health minister proposed the involvement of the private sector under corporate social responsibility programs. She said foreign investment companies like Freeport, Newmont and others should join the fight against HIV in the country. (dia)
Jakarta Post - March 13, 2008
Yemris Fointuna, Kupang – Widespread and severe malnutrition has been declared across Rote Island, off West Timor, following the death of five children this month.
In addition, some 90,000 of almost 500,000 children were registered as suffering from severe hunger and malnutrition this month across East Nusa Tenggara province.
Rote Island's administration said it was now running a door-to- door campaign to encourage families with small children in remote villages, including offshore, to attend health facilities on the mainland for treatment.
The latest victims were 11-month-old Marlon Lay and two-month-old Melati. Their deaths last week saw the immediate area's death toll rise to seven – five from Rote Island and two from Kupang city, West Timor.
Rote-Ndao's administrative secretary Joel Yakob said Wednesday residents were faced with financial hardships and they found it difficult to bring their children to medical centers.
"That's why we have taken the initiative to send medical teams to fetch sufferers door-to-door in four districts," Yakob said.
"Each child will undergo an initial diagnosis and we will bring affected children to health centers and hospitals for treatment."
The number of malnourished children across East Nusa Tenggara had so far reached 90,000 out of a total of 497,577 children below the age of five, he said. On Rote Island, as many as 12,400 have been affected badly by malnutrition, including 167 with acute malnutrition, Taopan said. North Central Timor regency reported 81 cases, followed by West Sumba with 27 cases.
The highest number of children found to be malnourished was in Southern Timor regency, with 12,971, followed by Sikka with 8,472 children, Manggarai with 8,364 children, North Central Timor with 7,267 children and Kupang with 6,865 children.
Yakob said malnutrition and severe food shortages were the result of harvest failures and a long drought in 2007. "Food shortage is the main cause of malnutrition, apart from people's economic difficulties," Yakob said.
The local administration said it has set aside Rp 1 billion (approximately US$111,000) from its newly approved budget to help solve food shortages. "The funds are specially aimed at handling the extraordinary situation," Yakob said.
From the center of Rote Island, Ba'a district hospital's director Delly Pasande said the hospital had prepared the necessary facilities to treat patients.
"Ba'a hospital can accommodate 50 patients," he said. "We have also prepared the required medicines, including highly nutritious food supplements."
Healthcare supervision head at the provincial health office Maxi Taopan said the office had not yet received Rp 50 billion in assistance funds pledged by Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari. "So we are unable to handle the problem optimally," Taopan said.
Jakarta Post - March 11, 2008
Yuli Tri Suwarni, Bandung – The number of lepers has nearly doubled and the disease has spread to almost every regency and city in West Java over the past year, due to poor sanitation, a health official said Monday.
West Java Health Office environmental health division head Wahyu Suryaputra said his office recorded 2,579 people suffering leprosy in 24 of 25 regencies and cities in 2007, compared to only 1,582 cases recorded in the previous year.
"Sanitation and environmental factors have added to the rising number of leprosy cases in West Java," Wahyu said in Bandung.
Based on data from the health office, only Cimahi city is free of the disease. Leprosy is caused by mycobacterium leprae bacillus mycobacterium, similar to that which causes tuberculosis, which has an incubation period of three to five years.
Leprosy is prevalent in Bogor, Bekasi, Sukabumi, Karawang, Subang, Indramayu and Cirebon regencies and Bekasi city, with each recording more than 200 cases. Bogor, Karawang and Indramayu are among the areas most affected, with 293, 285 and 274 cases, respectively. Banjar and Cianjur regencies have just five cases each.
"We must raise our awareness of environmental hygiene in order to curb the disease," Wahyu said. Most lepers are underprivileged and live in densely populated areas which have poor sanitation.
They are usually ostracized by the community, so it becomes difficult for them to stop the disease. Most sufferers seek treatment only when their condition worsens, after they suffer physical deformity.
Early detection expedites cure, Wahyu said. Leprosy is characterized by symptoms resembling skin ailments, in which reddish spots appear on affected parts of the body.
The disease causes numbness and in acute cases causes permanent physical deformities, muscular atrophy and mutilation, if medical treatment is not given immediately.
The disease is curable with proper medication, within one year after contraction.
The number of lepers in West Java declined to 1,854 in 2002, but rose to more than 2,000 in 2004 before dropping again in 2006.
| War on corruption |
Jakarta Post - March 14, 2008
Lilian Budianto, Jakarta – A group of 55 lawmakers filed an official petition Thursday for the House of Representatives to investigate the government's failure to recover trillions of rupiah from state debtors.
The formal request was submitted through House Deputy Speaker Muhaimin Iskandar who said the legislature would arrange a schedule for a plenary session to decide whether or not to accept it.
Support for the demand came from lawmakers from all 11 factions in the House except for those from the Prosperous Peace Party (PDS). The National Mandate Party (PAN) topped support for the proposed inquiry, with 30 of its lawmakers signing the petition.
Among the signatories were Drajad Wibowo of the PAN, Ade Daud Nasution of the Reform Star Party (PBR), Suripto of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and Abdullah Azwar Anas of the National Awakening Party (PKB). Ade Daud said the signatories included five lawmakers from Golkar Party and one from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).
"The five from Golkar include Mahardi Sinambela, Bomer Pasaribu and Yudi Krisnandi, while the only one from PDI-P was Suparlan," he said. The petitioners said the proposed inquiry into the embezzlement of Bank Indonesia liquidity assistance (BLBI) funds was not an attempt to impeach President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
"We are not expecting to impeach the President through the inquiry, but we want debtors to face responsibility for the BLBI funds," Dradjad said.
He said the government had to set aside Rp 65 trillion a year to pay the interest rate on BLBI funds, or seven times as much as the subsidies allocated for food products. Abdullah Azwar said the inquiry was targeting defiant debtors and was not meant to oust the President.
The government disbursed Rp 144.5 trillion (US$15.4 billion) to help 14 ailing banks stay afloat during the 1997-1998 Asian monetary crisis through BLBI funds. However, many debtors abused the liquidity support and took the money for themselves.
Finance Minister Sri Mulyani said out of Rp 129 trillion in outstanding state money, dispersed across 41 debtors, the government had only managed to recover some Rp 35 trillion worth of assets – a recovery rate of 27.13 percent.
Ade Daud said the lawmakers chose to file the petition because the government had turned a blind eye on fraudulent BLBI debtors. He said there was a sense of corruption behind their lack of responsibility toward the scandal.
Early this month the Attorney General's Office dropped BLBI cases against tycoons Anthony Salim and Sjamsul Nursalim, citing a lack of evidence. Two days later, senior AGO prosecutor Urip Tri Gunawan was caught by the Corruption Eradication Commission allegedly receiving $660,000 from businesswoman Artalita Suryani, who has been linked to Nursalim.
Suripto said the arrest of Urip and Artalita should see the House push for an inquiry into the BLBI scandal after a questioning session last month failed to produce a satisfying result.
"We want to have a thorough investigation into the BLBI fraud case," Suripto said. "All parties alleged to have been involved in the crime, including the President himself if necessary, must be questioned," he said.
Jakarta Post - March 12, 2008
Jakarta – Prosecutors demanded Tuesday that late former president Soeharto's heirs pay a total of Rp 13.9 trillion (US$1.5 billion) in damages to the state for misusing scholarship funds managed by his Supersemar foundation.
In South Jakarta District Court proceedings they accused Soeharto of having intentionally used foundation money for companies owned by cronies of the former strongman.
Appearing together with other monies in a prosecution dossier was an injection of more than $400 million investment into PT Bank Duta. The money was never returned to the foundation and the bank was declared insolvent.
A loan of Rp 150 billion from the foundation to PT Kiani Sakti – of which only Rp 37.5 billion was returned – was another unlawful investment, the prosecutors said.
"It can be concluded then that the defendants never intended for the money to be returned, or at least allowed these companies to not return the money," prosecutor Yoseph Suardi Sabda told the court.
Prosecutors estimate the state lost $420 million and Rp 185.0 billion worth of scholarships and social activity funds.
The prosecution rejected the testimony of an expert witness presented by the Soeharto heirs that the heirs couldn't be held liable for financial acts of the former president who died on Feb. 27, 2008.
The witness was countering the opinion of another expert who said the law provided for an automatic transfer of legal rights and obligations to heirs.
"We also demand that the court make the heirs pay the fines now, regardless of whether they decide to appeal or not," said prosecutor Johanes Tanak.
Soeharto's death saw the transfer of some legal rights to his children, who were summoned but did not attend a Feb. 12 hearing in the civil trial.
Through their lawyer, the heirs asked the court to hear Bustanul Arifin, an expert witness on religious law who said that Soeharto's children could not be pulled into the civil case unless it involved their inheritance.
After the trial, defense lawyer Juan Felix Tampubolon said the prosecutors were wrong to claim the foundation's money as state funds.
"The foundation's money was accumulated from donations, and thus the foundation is allowed to do whatever it pleases with these donations," Juan Felix said.
"Besides, the investments were made so the dividends would continue to fund Supersemar, allowing the foundation to undertake more social and education activities," he added.
Yoseph called the prosecutor's argument moot because the money was never meant to be invested. "The most important thing here is that they admitted that they used the foundation money for investments, not for social and educational purposes."
Supersemar was funded by state-owned banks, which were obligated by prevailing law to give 2.5 percent of their profits to the foundation. The trial reconvenes on March 27 when a final decision from the court is expected. (anw)
| Islam/religion |
Jakarta Post - March 15, 2008
Tony Hotland, Jakarta – Indonesia has said the film Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders plans to release about the Koran could derail interfaith dialog and harm efforts toward global stability and peace.
The film, called Fitna (Slander), is said to depict Islam's holy text as a "fascist book" that "should be banned".
Wilders said he plans to release the 15-minute film on March 28 and has already said the Koran is like Adolf Hitler's best-seller Mein Kampf or My Struggle – an autobiography and an exposition of Hitler's ideology.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Kristiarto Soeryo Legowo said Friday, "It is really inappropriate if (Wilders) presses on with his plan to release the film knowing it will offend Muslim communities".
"Indonesia has been active in promoting interfaith dialog. This film would serve as a new obstacle to the efforts that we all have initiated."
In 2006, rallies and rioting erupted against Danish interests in many Muslim countries after satirical cartoons appeared in a Danish newspaper and were later reprinted by European papers.
On Thursday, a group of Islamic, Christian and Catholic leaders in Indonesia issued a joint statement condemning and calling on the Dutch government to thwart the planned film release. They said, if released, the film would hurt Muslims worldwide and create uncalled-for strife among communities.
Wilders has been warned of potential attacks on Dutch citizens and businesses worldwide if the film is broadcast, but the Dutch government has failed to convince him to reconsider.
There are around one million Muslims in the Netherlands, which has a total population of 16 million. Indonesia is home to the world's largest Muslim population.
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said late last month his government "fundamentally disagreed" with Wilders, but the country guaranteed freedom of expression. Balkenende said, "We call on governments to uphold the principles of international law, such as the obligation it enshrines to protect foreign interests, nationals and businesses".
In 2004, filmmaker Theo van Gogh was killed by an extremist in Amsterdam after directing a television film accusing Islam of condoning violence against women.
Jakarta Post - March 11, 2008
Jakarta – Al-Qiyadah, an Islamic sect that rose under the leadership of Ahmad Mussadeq, emerged in response to changing times and Islam's international reputation, the South Jakarta District Court heard Monday.
Maksyusirdan, one of Al-Qiyadah's teachers who appeared as a witness in Mussadeq's trial, told the panel of judges that Mussadeq appeared as a prophet to save Islam from further denouncements.
"My understanding is that we are entering a new era of civilization, thus everything needs to be re-evaluated," he said. Maksyusirdan said he repented after Mussadeq had sworn allegiance to Islam, adding that Al-Qiyadah no longer exists.
Outside the trial, several civil Islamic organizations, such as the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) and the Islam Defenders Brigade (LPI), demanded Mussadeq's death for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.
Jakarta Post - March 10, 2008
Tifa Asrianti, Bekasi – Five churches in North Bekasi held Sunday services from Permata Jijau Permai housing estate despite a rumor members of the Cooperating Bureau of Mosques and Praying Rooms (Musholla) would stage large protests against their efforts.
Police officers were seen patrolling the housing estate, where the protesters were expected, but no such gathering occurred.
The five churches included the Indonesian Bethel Church of Shalom, the Indonesian Bethel Church of Maranatha, the Indonesian Christian Protestant Church, the Indonesian Pentecostal Church and the Javanese Christian Church.
Various obstacles put up by protesters have seen church organizations in the area unable to build permanent buildings and so they operate out of makeshift shophouses.
Edward Butar-butar from the Bekasi Christian Family Forum said there were nine other churches in the Permata Hijau Permai real estate but threats seemed to be focused on five churches at the shophouses block.
The cooperating bureau organizing the protests made complaints to local authorities about the churches and their operations last year. Tensions escalated after Dec. 16, 2007, when hundreds of people entered a church during Mass and forced the congregation to stop the service.
Following the December protests, the Javanese Christian Church moved to Taman Kebalen estate. Four churches stayed despite further protests.
Elizabeth Suria, church secretary at the Shalom church, said her congregation had been faced with a number of incidents including garbage being dumped at their church entrance and protesters blocking congregation members from entering their building. "So far, there has been no physical abuse, but we couldn't perform mass," she said.
One protester interviewed said "his people" did not want to interrupt religious activity, but wanted "legal certainty about the building's usage". "They are using shophouses as houses of worship," Yos said. "I think it is against the regulation."
In response to the opposition, Elizabeth said the shophouses they used as churches belonged to them, and they had a legal right to use them for whatever purpose.
Edward Butar-butar said the Christian congregations had to use shophouses for services because it was difficult to build churches there.
He said the Indonesian Christian Protestant Church and St. Clara church, a Catholic church in a neighboring real estate, had experienced problems with their land, construction funds and construction permits.
"Some people objected to the construction plan and as a result the church has never been built," Edward told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
Bekasi municipality council member and member of the Peace and Welfare Party (PDS) Jonni S. Batubara said construction of a Batak church in Tanggul, North Bekasi, was stopped last year after people protested against it.
Another council member and faction head of the Justice Welfare Party (PKS), Wahyu Prihantono said the problem was related to miss-communication between churchgoers and the people.
"Performing a religious activity is a human right," Wahyu said. "To prevent the opposition, we should strengthen the role of FKUB (Bekasi's Interfaith Communication Forum)."
In 2006, the government issued a two-minister regulation stipulating a church permit should include at least 90 churchgoers, have support from 60 local residents, be legalized by the local authorities, and receive a recommendation from the head of the municipality's religious office and one from the FKUB.
| Elections/political parties |
Jakarta Post - March 15, 2008
Abdul Khalik and Lilian Budianto, Jakarta – President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono may find it difficult to run for another term should the House of Representatives approve a tighter requirement for parties to name presidential candidates.
The Golkar Party, the largest faction in the House, has proposed that only a party or a coalition of parties winning 30 percent of votes in the 2009 legislative election should be allowed to nominate presidential candidates.
A tighter requirement has similarly been proposed by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which suggested a number of 25 percent.
The two major parties wanted the proposals included in a new bill on presidential elections currently under deliberation at the House. The current presidential election law requires a minimum 15 percent of votes for nominating candidates.
Yudhoyono was nominated for the presidency in 2004 by the Democratic Party (PD), which garnered only 10 percent of votes in the national legislative election that year.
Political scientists said the 30 percent minimum requirement would be good to simplify the election system, but added it would diminish Yudhoyono's chance to run for reelection.
"I believe that lawmakers aren't specifically aiming to block Yudhoyono with the proposal, because it had been discussed before 2004," Ikrar Nusa Bhakti, an analyst from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, said Thursday.
"If the House agrees to it then Yudhoyono should be resourceful in finding parties to support him," he told The Jakarta Post.
Ikrar said Yudhoyono's chances of running again would depend on how many votes the party or parties backing him could get in the legislative elections.
The Golkar and the PDI-P argued the tighter requirement was needed to create a stable administration in the future and simplify the electoral system.
"A government supported by a big number of lawmakers at the House will make for a stable administration," Golkar lawmaker Hari Azhar Azis said.
Ganjar Pranowo of the PDI-P agreed that to avoid repeating the current situation in which Yudhoyono had a weak position vis a vis the House because he only secured support from a small party, the president must be backed by major factions in the House.
Hari said Golkar and the PDI-P could easily compromise to push the agenda through. He and Ganjar quickly dismissed allegations that major parties were attempting to sideline smaller parties or prevent Yudhoyono from running in the next presidential race.
Critics have said if approved by the House the new mechanism would also close the doors for new figures to contest the presidential election.
Golkar won 28 percent of votes and the PDI-P grabbed 22.7 percent in the 2004 parliamentary election. With the two largest parties having a combined 277 of the House's 550 seats, they would win a vote for a revised regulation to be included in the new presidential election bill.
Other parties, including the United Development Party (PPP), the National Awakening Party (PKB) and the National Mandate Party (PAN), received 10.5 percent, 9.8 percent and 8.5 percent of votes in 2004, respectively. The remaining two parties, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and the Crescent Star Party, garnered 8.4 percent and 2 percent each.
Based on these results, under the proposed regulation no minor parties would be entitled to nominate presidential candidates without establishing a coalition. The 2009 presidential election would see a maximum of three candidates should the new mechanism be included in the new draft law.
The proposed mechanism was rejected by all minor parties. The PPP, PAN and the PD have said they all wanted a 15 percent minimum requirement. The PKB has insisted the requirement be set at only 2.5 percent in accordance with the parliamentary threshold stipulated in the newly endorsed legislative election law.
Jakarta Post - March 10, 2008
Jakarta – The Golkar Party has drawn criticism for proposing only political groups winning at least 30 percent of national votes in the 2009 legislative election should be allowed to nominate presidential candidates.
Political scientists said Saturday the proposed mechanism would hamper the emergence of new potential figures in Indonesian politics. "This is a kind of political hegemony by major parties," said Muhammad Qodari, executive director of pollster Indobarometer.
He said the 30 percent requirement was too high for most parties to meet. Qodari suggested the House of Representatives adopt the 15 percent minimum requirement as stipulated in the current presidential election law. The 15 percent requirement would provide the public with about five presidential candidates and would thus offer them more alternatives, he said.
Golkar wanted its proposed 30 percent requirement included in a new bill on presidential elections set for deliberation at the House starting Monday.
Ferry Mursyidan Baldan of the House's Golkar faction said his party proposed the tighter requirement because it wanted to build a more permanent coalition in the House.
"It's difficult for any political party to meet this 30 percent requirement. Therefore, it would force them to build a more permanent coalition in the future government," he said.
Ferry said the requirement would also create a stronger government. "This new mechanism will convey that the established government is based on sharing support and there is no political party that can claim that it owns the government."
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party, which is part of Golkar's coalition in the House, rejected the proposal. Democratic Party leader Anas Urbaningurum said his party wanted the requirement lowered to only 15 percent of the total votes as stipulated by the prevailing law.
"We think 15 percent is a moderate requirement. This is not too easy and not too difficult," he said as quoted by Antara.
Criticism also came from Saiful Mujani, executive director of another political pollster Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI). He said Golkar's idea on one hand would simplify the presidential election, but on the other would curb the opportunity for candidates with support of minor parties to contest the presidential election.
"These candidates will no longer have political vehicles," he said. Saiful said if this formula were adopted, there would be only three candidates to vie for president in 2009 and that they would likely be current prominent figures. "The public would no longer have hopes of fresh faces," he added.
Saiful dismissed Golkar's claim that the 30 percent minimum requirement would promote a permanent coalition of political parties. "Coalitions are never based on political platforms, but on short-term interests only," he said, adding there was no need to regulate the establishment of a political coalition.
Qodari similarly said there was no guarantee political parties would maintain their coalition after a new president was elected. He cited Jakarta's current legislative council as an example.
"Major factions formed a coalition to endorse Fauzi Bowo as governor, but after he was elected the council was still not able to reach an agreement on the provincial budget," Qodari said.
Both Saiful and Qodari suggested the House maintain the nomination mechanism in the current legislation on presidential elections, instead of creating a new one.
The House's special team is scheduled to begin deliberating the new presidential election bill Monday. The initial meeting is expected to discuss the schedules and steps for deliberation. (alf)
Jakarta Post - March 10, 2008
The National Awakening Party (PKB) patron and former president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid was positive about his prospects in the upcoming 2009 presidential elections, after his recent nomination.
"I am optimistic. We have gained support from ulemas in villages. They will encourage their masses to support me (in the election) to help build a prosperous country," Gus Dur said Sunday in Jakarta, as quoted by detik.com news portal.
PKB chairman Muhaimin Iskandar said his party had nominated Gus Dur because the former president would help get the reform movement back on track.
"The reform movement has lost its direction and that's why we nominated Gus Dur, to help the reform movement reach its original goal," he said. Muhaimin called PKB cadres to unite and support Gus Dur in the election. "People have tried to break up our unity but I'm certain they will not be able to."
One political observer, however, from the University of Indonesia, Arbi Sanit, dismissed PKB's optimism, saying "Gus Dur's momentum has passed".
He criticized the party saying it was suffering from a leadership crisis with the nomination, adding that Gus Dur would lose to other candidates, which would include his successor Megawati Soekarnoputri and incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
| Jakarta/urban poor |
Jakarta Post - March 15, 2008
Jakarta – People living in refugee tents, with nothing more than the clothes on their back after disaster struck their families and homes, was something Muhammad Amin thought he would only ever see on TV.
"I never imagined such a disaster would ever happen to me, but it did," he told The Jakarta Post on Thursday. When the Post met him, he was sitting alone in front of the remains of his house, occasionally puffing on a clove cigarette, his eyes vacant.
Amin's house and two others, which belonged to his relatives, in Kampung Gandaria in Radio Dalam, South Jakarta, were destroyed Wednesday afternoon by a flash flood during a heavy downpour in the area.
Amin, 45, is a native Betawi and has lived in the kampung all his life. "The house and the land were all my family had. It's like everything has been taken from us," he said.
For Amin, as for many other Jakarta residents, environmental degradation and population explosion have left no safe place in the city, not even in their own homes.
Amin and other residents started to see the first rainwater floods in the kampung in the late 1980s, but they did not worry because the water was only ankle-high. But every year it got worse. In early 2000s the floodwater was knee-high and Wednesday it was chest-high.
The trouble in the area started when the basin structure of the kampung caused local Jelawe River to overflow during heavy rain, flooding the area and creating a pool of water on an empty block next to the neighborhood. Between the vacant land and the houses was a long wall that usually held back the rainwater. On Wednesday, the wall gave way.
As the water from the heavy and prolonged rain built up, the brick wall in front of Amin's house could not withstand the pressure. When it broke, the water rushed through the neighborhood, destroying three houses and damaging many others.
Amin said the wall was built by the BRI Bank to protect the land, which was the subject of a legal ownership dispute. "Representatives from the bank came today, but they didn't promise any compensation. Some people from the subdistrict office also came and took pictures, but didn't say anything about it either," he said.
Amin said despite the frequent flooding, the neighborhood had never received any serious attention from the government. "Once government officers came in the mid-1990s, dredging the river a bit. In the following days, a newspaper reported the city government had 'successfully cleaned Kampung Gandaria', a big lie," said the father of two.
According to Amin, there were not many people in the area until the mid-1980s, and there were more trees and rice fields. Heavy rain never resulted in floods, as Jelawe River was not yet clogged with garbage and the breadth of open space eased the water absorption.
But more and more people had arrived during the past two decades, transforming the quiet kampung into a crowded neighborhood.
"Now when it rains heavily, the river overflows and floods the neighborhood to a meter deep," Amin said. The only breadwinner in his family, Amin works as a security guard in Cibubur for less than Rp 1 million (US$110) a month.
Amin is yet to decide what to do for his family or where to take them after the disaster. He is temporarily staying at his neighbor's house while his family is staying with a relative of his wife. "I was born and raised here, and so were my parents and my children. I don't know where else to go," he said. (dre)
Jakarta Post - March 11, 2008
Jakarta – For squatters of Kampung Bayam in Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta, life goes on as usual, despite the city administration's plan to eject them and restore the area to its original use as a green zone.
"I've heard about the plan recently, but there hasn't been a formal announcement from the subdistrict chief. However, if they decide to force us out, we don't have any other choice," said Musthoni, 55, who has been living in the area since 1998.
The Tanjung Priok district chief, Darwis Triaji, as quoted by Beritajakarta.com last week, said the administration planned to expel all Bayam residents during the second week of March.
Kampung Bayam (Spinach Kampung) was established in the early 1990s by people who cleared undergrowth and planted vegetables in a vacant area called BMW Park, for Bersih, Manusiawi dan Berwibawa (clean, humane and esteemed).
The administration wants to restore the 66-hectare park as part of plans to add a total of 55,540 square meters to the city's green areas. That plan is a response to criticism that flooding in the city is made worse by natural drainage areas that are converted to other uses.
"But why now? When thousands of people have settled on the land to make a living," said Solihin, 38, who has been there 13 years.
When people started to cultivate the land and build shacks, Solihin said, there was no indication the land was intended as a park. "It was just idle land with wild bushes and tall grass. When I started my spinach farm in 1995 there were already dozens of farmers in the area. There wasn't any officer who told us no."
Once praised as the city's largest public park, BMW's original design even includes a water sports center. It is indeed the second largest park in the city, after 80-hectare Monas Park in Central Jakarta, and was built when Wiyogo Atmodarminto was governor (1987-1992).
Solihin said permanent residents had increased over the years and more than 1,200 families now occupy the 26-hectare parcel. They live in houses they built themselves or are renting from other residents of the unplanned community.
This would be at least the second time Siah, 36, and her husband, have found themselves homeless. They came to BMW last year from another squatter neighborhood nearby.
The couple survive as peddlers but say they can't make ends meet. "We are trying to make a life here, like we've been doing for years."
The couple is prepared for the worst, however. "If the government isn't going to let us try to take care of ourselves, and wants to push us out again, so be it." (dre)
| Economy & investment |
Jakarta Post - March 13, 2008
Nana Rukmana, Cirebon – Skyrocketing cooking oil prices have threatened the traditional food industry in Indramayu regency, West Java, putting many cracker producers at risk of going out of business.
Some 350 workers, once employed by as many as 55 small-scale prawn cracker producers, lost their jobs after their companies closed down in Kenanga village, in Sindang district, Indramayu.
The price of cooking oil in the regency has risen from Rp 12,000 (US$1.30) to Rp 15,000 per kilogram over the last week.
Rusman, a prawn cracker producer, said the spiraling price of cooking oil was already beyond his means. "Cooking oil is very expensive now. Producers can no longer buy it. We have stopped producing over the past week," he said.
Rusman said nearly all producers in Kenanga village had stopped operating, and were subsequently forced to lay off their workers. "Around 55 producers have stopped production. They each employ an average of seven workers. As they are no longer able to produce, they have to lay off their workers," said Rusman.
He said cooking oil was a key material in prawn cracker production, and that every day a single producer needed at least 30 kilograms of cooking oil to fry 50 kilos of crackers.
He said a number of producers had attempted to remain in business by reducing the size of their crackers. "It didn't last long because many customers stopped placing orders."
Kenanga village head Hasan said the stoppage had badly affected residents. "Most of the workers are local residents. They have become jobless since production stopped," he said.
Hasan said he hoped the government would find a way to resolve the problem. "I'm afraid all the producers will stay out of business if no efforts are made to curb the price of cooking oil," he said.
In response to the issue, Indramayu legislative councilor Ono Surono said the legislature would call on the provincial administration to help the small-scale producers.
"The current surge in the price of cooking oil is uncontrollable and small-scale producers have been hit the hardest. The legislature has urged the administration to bail out the small- scale producers," said Ono.
| Opinion & analysis |
Jakarta Post - March 13, 2008
Recent reports of a mother and her two children who died of hunger in the South Sulawesi capital Makassar and of five people who died of malnutrition-caused illnesses in the East Nusa Tenggara town of Ndao shed some light on a tragedy of humanity facing the country.
Not only do these deaths speak volumes about the depth of the poverty problem here, but they bring into question the government's credibility, given its apparent neglect of the social and economic well being of citizens.
That the central government quickly shifted the blame to local administrations will not repair the damage that has been done. The government's quick retreat to that old favorite, the blame game, is further cause for concern about the prospects of eventually winning the fight against poverty, because the government is apparently part of the problem instead of the solution.
There seems to be a lack of coordination among related bureaucracies entrusted with poverty alleviation programs, which is no less fatal than the absence of awareness among policy- makers about guaranteeing the rights of the needy. With the election year drawing near, we are worried the problem of poverty will further disappear from the national agenda, or conversely be misused by politicians in search of votes.
We still remember the move by House of Representatives lawmakers in 2005 to summon the government to clarify an outbreak of malnutrition in Papua, Java and East Nusa Tenggara, which left dozens dead. The showdown concluded with the government promising to provide Rp 300,000 a month in cash assistance to each low- income family, a policy that lasted just one year.
Comprehensive measures to address the root causes of poverty have been lacking because the issue has been reduced to a political commodity.
Indonesia's poverty rate stood at about 17 percent of the country's 220 million people in 2006, according to the Central Statistics Agency, which categorizes those earning less than $1.55 a day as living below the poverty line.
With the prices of many basic commodities having sharply risen of late, we can only imagine how people can live on that amount of money. They cannot afford to meet their minimum nutritional needs, let alone fulfill their basic needs for clothing and housing.
Malnutrition deprives people, particularly children, of protection from various diseases, which is one way poverty causes death. This has been exacerbated by poor healthcare for many who live in outlying and impoverished regions.
Economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Massachusetts, the United States, wrote in a paper published last December that in the case of Indonesia, there was very little difference in death rates between the poor and the extremely poor in all age groups, but the non-poor were less likely to die than the poor and the extremely poor.
This is true in both rural and urban areas. In rural areas, depending on the age group and whether we look ahead five or 10 years, the extremely poor are 1.4 to five times more likely to die than those who live on between $6 and $10 a day.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla once estimated the country would need at least Rp 1,000 trillion (about $111 billion) in new investment to accelerate economic growth, which many believe is key to reducing high poverty and unemployment rates. But with the government allocating too much of its annual budget on subsidies and debt servicing, little is left over for poverty alleviation.
In this regard, the government's reluctance to slash fuel subsidies looks like a pro-poor policy, but in fact it robs the poor of much of the money to which they are entitled. The subsidies have long gone to millions of people who are by any standard not poor.
The latest deaths as a result of hunger and malnutrition could be the mere tip of the iceberg for poverty problems in the country, as well as the chronic problem of poor governance, characterized by an inability to generate policies that protect the weak. The longer poverty prevails, the more people will die and the less legitimate, at least morally, the government.
Jakarta Post - March 12, 2008
What an unfortunate year for Indonesia's tourism industry. Less than one month after the government declared 2008 Visit Indonesia Year, flooding crippled Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, the main gateway to the country, early last month.
Last week, the second annual Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2008, by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum, downgraded Indonesia as a tourist destination to 80th among 130 countries surveyed. That was much worse than its position last year, which was 60th out of 124 countries.
The report showed that Indonesia scored very poorly in health and hygiene due to an inadequate supply of hospital beds, poor access to sanitation and drinking water and an acutely low number of qualified physicians.
The country also performed badly in that other pillar of the tourism industry – infrastructure. In fact, Indonesian airplanes have been banned from European airspace since last year and no progress has been made on getting this blanket ban lifted.
Indonesia scored high only in terms of natural resources, with several World Heritage natural sites and the richness of it flora and fauna, and price competitiveness. But these strengths were undermined by such major weaknesses as underdeveloped infrastructure, including air and ground transportation.
There are even great concerns related to safety, particularly the prevalence of road accidents.
No wonder Indonesia, though richly endowed with a wide variety of cultures and interesting sites, has remained among the least popular tourist destinations even in the Southeast Asian region, outranked by Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Last year, Indonesia received just around 5.5 million tourists, compared to more than 9 million arrivals in Malaysia and almost 20 million in Singapore.
The survey showed the top-ranked countries in the travel and tourism industry – Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Australia, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, Sweden, Canada and France – understand the importance of support businesses and regulatory frameworks, coupled with world-class transportation and tourism infrastructure and a focus on nurturing human and natural resources.
Countries have vastly different underlying operational conditions, depending on where they fall in the tourism development spectrum. All have unique tourism products to offer, but the central goal is to encourage improvement in the underlying competitive conditions and infrastructure.
This is again where Indonesia is fundamentally weak, even in nature-based tourism, where the country should have a strong comparative advantage.
This latest travel and tourism report from the World Economic Forum should serve as a strong wake-up call for us, especially the government, to reinvigorate the tourism industry, especially now in the midst of a weakening global economy and uncertainty in the international financial market.
International tourism is known as a resilient industry, never suffering a deep and lasting recession and able to recover quickly because the need to travel, whether for business or leisure, is so deeply ingrained in our societies.
As a resource-based industry, tourism is also an ideal business for Indonesia to develop because of its multiplier effect and the labor-intensive nature of its operations. It directly benefits local communities economically. Travel businesses do their best when they use the local workforce, services, products and supplies.
The tourism industry also supports the integrity of a place. Destination-savvy travelers seek out businesses that emphasize the character of a locale. Tourism revenue in turn raises the perceived value of those assets.
Travel-related businesses such as hotels, restaurants, transportation, handicrafts and cultural shows are all labor intensive, the very kind of enterprises needed to absorb the huge pool of job seekers here.
But it is precisely because of its multi-sectoral activities that the promotion of the tourism industry should involve not only the tourism ministry but all other state and private organizations that provide the basic infrastructure and public services, including immigration, customs, transportation, accommodation and security.
Jakarta Post - March 10, 2008
Bribery issues filled public spaces last week, following the dramatic arrest of a top prosecutor by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). The media made it headlines, the people incessantly talked about it, and it should now lead to something bigger: reform in our law enforcement agencies.
Last week's arrest of Urip Tri Gunawan, the chief prosecutor investigating possible corruption in the Bank Indonesia liquidity support (BLBI) to now defunct Bank BDNI, only confirms the widely held notion that bribery is rampant among our law enforcers, especially prosecutors.
We often hear talk of prosecutors at the local level targeting and extorting local officials suspected of corruption. They treat these officials as their personal ATMs. If prosecutors abuse their power against small fish at the local level, how would they treat big fish in BLBI cases?
KPK officials caught Urip red-handed while he was transporting US$660,000 in cash he had just received from Arthalita Suryani at the home of Sjamsul Nursalim, owner of BDNI, in South Jakarta. The KPK declared both Urip and Arthalia bribery suspects. Kudos to the KPK!
Urip received the money only a few days after the Attorney General's Office (AGO) dropped corruption cases against Nursalim and Anthony Salim, former majority owner of Bank Central Asia.
When the AGO launched the investigation into loan scandals involving BCA and BDNI, many parties, including politicians at the House of Representatives, questioned the AGO's intention and sincerity, as both cases were already considered closed and the previous government had cleared both Salim and Nursalim from criminal prosecution.
However, with the arrest of Urip, the AGO is again under pressure to reopen the BLBI cases of Salim and Nursalim, which involved trillions of rupiah in losses to the government.
Salim at the height of crisis owed the government Rp 52.7 trillion, and he paid back with his assets in over 100 companies. But when the government sold the assets, their value had dropped to only Rp 19.3 trillion. Similarly, Nursalim's assets transferred to the government were valued at Rp 28.4 trillion, but then sold for only Rp 4.9 trillion.
Many attributed the losses to the crisis, and thus they are often dubbed the "cost of crisis", but there are also parties who see corruption and collusion in the transfer of assets to the government and their fire sales. There must be something wrong there.
As a start, the AGO should investigate the possible collusion and corruption behind the issuance of the criminal release and discharge statement by then President Megawati Soekarnoputri to the tycoons.
But before doing that, the AGO must clear its own house of corrupt prosecutors, because entering BLBI cases, as in the words of Attorney General Hendarman Supandji, is like entering "a jungle full of dark powers".
Therefore, the first thing the AGO needs to deal with is bribery against its own prosecutors. Bribery is indeed the hardest thing to tackle, at least when compared to corruption. While corruption often leaves traces, such as documents or bank accounts, bribery usually does not. Most of the time it involves cash payments, as in the case of Urip.
The AGO must first of all impose harsh penalties for those found guilty of bribery or those caught red-handed taking bribes, like Urip. But so far, the attorney general hasn't imposed any penalty against Urip. At the very least, Urip must be fired.
As an institution tasked with fighting corruption, the AGO needs also to be equipped with the power to tackle bribery, such as with state-of-the-art wire-tapping equipment like that employed by the KPK.
Next, the AGO could conduct an audit of its prosecutors' wealth. From there, the attorney general would have a clear picture which prosecutors are relatively clean and which are not. Only then could we expect a more credible AGO.
Let the arrest of Urip provide the momentum to start an overhaul and reform of the AGO, and hopefully it will inspire our political leaders to expand integrity reform to cover other law enforcers, the police and the justice system. Only then will our ten-year-old reform movement have a reformed guardian of the law.