Widodo’s smoke and mirrors hide hard truths

Indonesian leader has become a master of the art of official obfuscation and embellishment with 2019 elections in his sights

By JOHN MCBETH

Indonesian President Joko Widodo waves at an ASEAN summit event at Clark, Pampanga, northern Philippines November 12, 2017. Photo: Reuters/Erik De Castro

Facilitated by a largely unquestioning media, Indonesian President Joko Widodo's government has become a master at the game of smoke and mirrors, which in its simplistic form is all about convincing the public that things are happening when they really aren't.

The protracted negotiations with US mining giant Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold are a good example, but going back to the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono the deceptive game-playing has covered everything from beef to natural resources to infrastructure.

While not new, the official obfuscation and embellishment of the truth has become more apparent as the 2019 legislative and presidential elections approach and Widodo and his palace spin doctors perceive the need to display his accomplishments.

Yudhoyono played this game back in mid-2011 when the Australian government suspended live cattle exports to Indonesia over animal welfare issues, and Jakarta decided some payback was in order by ordering a ban of its own.

Over the next two years, it slashed cattle imports by half and sought to convince consumers that the local industry could fill the gap when rising prices – and one of the lowest per capita beef consumption rates in Asia — clearly showed it could not.

Fast forward to the much-vaunted China-backed US$5.8 billion Jakarta-Bandung fast-rail project, once seen as the showcase of Widodo's ambitious infrastructure program and now stalled over land acquisition issues that should have been foreseen.

President Joko Widodo and China Railway Corp manager Sheng Guangzu (C) examine a high-speed train model at a groundbreaking ceremony for the Jakarta-Bandung line on January 21, 2016. Photo: Reuters / Garry Lotulung

Getting it started hasn't been for the want of trying. Widodo attended a ground-breaking ceremony in January 2016, only to see Transport Minister Jonan Ignasius call a halt to the project five days later because of several "unresolved issues."

Widodo and the Chinese weren't amused.  In July, the same month the construction permit for the project was finally issued, Ignasius — the former, highly successful chief executive of state-run railway Kareta Api — was unceremoniously sacked.

The president should have already learnt his lesson. In mid-2015, he had presided over the ground-breaking of the US$4 billion, Japan-funded Batang power station in Central Java, only to discover local farmers were still refusing to sell a key patch of land.

The courts finally resolved that one, but the railway still isn't going anywhere despite the efforts of State Enterprise Minister Rini Soemarno, who showed up last July for yet another ground-breaking event – this one a tunnel.

It takes a lot to beat the whole Freeport saga, though, starting with last year's framework agreement which was hailed at the time as a major victory for the Widodo government in forcing the company to agree to divest 51% of its shares in its local subsidiary.

Maybe so, but no-one seemed to notice that the devil was in the small print. In fact, the Indonesia media failed to point out at the time that the crucial questions of valuation and management control had yet to be settled.

A protestor at PT Freeport Indonesia’s headquarters in Jakarta calling for the closure of its mine in Papua province. Photo: Reuters/Beawiharta

Little surprise then that the negotiations continue, interspersed on frequent occasions with reassuring pronouncements by senior government officials that a final, final deal is just around the corner. It has been a long corner.

So far, there have been at least four government-imposed deadlines, all based on the extension of Freeport's permit allowing it to continue exporting copper concentrate from its high-altitude Grasberg mine in Papua's Central Highlands. The next one is in June.

Refusing the permit would clearly hurt the company's profits, but it would also cut deeply into government revenues and, perhaps more importantly, lead to worker lay-offs that could spark unrest in the country's already volatile Papua region.

In the latest show-and-tell, the government last week ceremonially signed a memorandum of understanding under which it will hand over 10% of the Freeport Indonesia shares it still needs to acquire to the Papua provincial administration.

The government spin machine has also recently turned to eastern Indonesia's Marsela natural gas project, which for reasons even some senior Indonesian politicians can't figure, Widodo wants to be developed on a remote, sparsely-inhabited island.

A Pertamina worker sits under pipes at Bunyu island, Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province in a file photo. Reuters/Beawiharta

Joint venture partners Inpex and Shell have been dragging their feet, arguing that only an offshore facility makes sense, given the undersea terrain and a lack of existing infrastructure.

With the project seemingly in limbo, the government announced earlier this month that the partners were working on detailed plans for an onshore plant that would be finished by the end of this year. Tellingly, there was no word from either company.

"The officials are talking on behalf of the company, without the company knowing anything about it," says one Indonesian oil veteran. "That's politics, but for me as an industrialist it is very troubling."

The French oil giant Total has maintained a similarly stoic silence since the state-run Pertamina oil company claimed the firm wanted back into the Mahakham gas field, which it had to leave when its contract expired last December.

In fact, with little money to maintain the Mahakham, it is the government that has been offering Total a slightly higher 39% participating interest to entice it to return as a partner in the field it ran for more than 40 years.

Widodo also adopted Yudhoyono's cattle chicanery, part of an economic self-sufficiency program in which, with little planning and a lot of wishful thinking, Indonesia was hoping to produce all its own beef, rice, sugar, corn and soybeans.

In 2015, it was proudly announced that the proportion of beef imports to total consumption had dropped from 31% to 24%, without anyone noting that Indonesians were eating just 2.7 kilograms a year, the lowest per capita rate in the region.

A year later, that figure had shot back up again to 32% and last year it increased yet again to 41% with the price of beef at US$10 a kilogram and officials acknowledging the obvious: that Widodo's five-year self-sufficiency target was now unattainable.

Again, that has a familiar ring to it. By importing rice, seen as almost a crime in some nationalistic quarters, past governments have often been forced to admit (if anyone is listening) that Indonesia's supposed self-sufficiency in rice is nothing but a myth.

That would have former President Suharto, who did achieve rice self-sufficiency back in the early 1980s with careful planning and a slew of coordinated programs, rolling over in his grave.

Sooner or later, the smoke and the mirrors will inevitably lift to reveal hard realities.

ASIA TIMES

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Jokowi Widodo Is In Error, the Inequality or the Poverty that is being grown out of?

Villagers in Indonesia, Picture Credit: World Bank

By Tim Worstall, contributor about economics, finance and public policy.

It's always slightly worrying when the ruler, or leader, of a place manages to get the basic diagnosis wrong, which is what I think is happening here with Jokowi in Indonesia. He's saying that the country needs a more equitable distribution of the wealth when that's not the problem at all, rather, there's not enough wealth to distribute. Thus the attention should be upon creation of more wealth rather than distributing the inadequate amount currently available. It's entirely possible that at some point the inequality becomes the greater problem but I severely doubt that this is so in Indonesia as yet:

Indonesia's president on Wednesday vowed a fairer distribution of the nation's wealth and a renewed commitment to protecting diversity after volatile months in which the country's reputation for tolerance was undermined by religious tensions and attacks on minorities.

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Opinion: Sorry President Widodo, GDP rankings are economists’ equivalent of fake news

‘GDP is an attempt to emulate the corporate world by putting money numbers on performance but... with GDP you get no equivalents of the corporate balance sheet or profit and loss account and no notes to the accounts’

‘GDP is an attempt to emulate the corporate world by putting money numbers on performance but... with GDP you get no equivalents of the corporate balance sheet or profit and loss account and no notes to the accounts’

Third in the world, is it? What world is that?

Within Asia alone I count 13 countries with higher reported economic growth rates than Indonesia’s latest 5.02 per cent.

They are India (7.5), Laos (7.4), Myanmar (7.3), Cambodia (7.2), Bangladesh (7.1), Philippines (6.9), China (6.7) Vietnam (6.2), Pakistan (5.7), Mongolia (5.5), Palau (5.5), Timor-Leste (5.5) and Papua New Guinea (5.4).

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Indonesia’s economic growth is the third in the world. What world is that?

‘GDP is an attempt to emulate the corporate world by putting money numbers on performance but... with GDP you get no equivalents of the corporate balance sheet or profit and loss account and no notes to the accounts’

‘GDP is an attempt to emulate the corporate world by putting money numbers on performance but... with GDP you get no equivalents of the corporate balance sheet or profit and loss account and no notes to the accounts’

Third in the world, is it? What world is that?

Within Asia alone I count 13 countries with higher reported economic growth rates than Indonesia’s latest 5.02 per cent.

They are India (7.5), Laos (7.4), Myanmar (7.3), Cambodia (7.2), Bangladesh (7.1), Philippines (6.9), China (6.7) Vietnam (6.2), Pakistan (5.7), Mongolia (5.5), Palau (5.5), Timor-Leste (5.5) and Papua New Guinea (5.4).

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Anti-Islam film and reaction in the Muslim world

HUNDREDS OF PROTESTERS gathered outside the United States embassy in London ...

(Photo: thejournal.ie)

A Coptic American, extreme right-winger and Islam- hater made an anti-Islam film and put it on the internet. Its reaction was very violent in the Muslim world beginning with Libya wherein an American ambassador Christopher Steve along with four other consulate staff was killed in violent demonstration. It was followed by violent demonstrations in Egypt, Yemen, and other places. Saudi Arabia which normally remains officially silent also had to strongly protest.

Of course some countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and others remained comparatively peaceful though signs of unrest are there in these countries too. In other words the countries covered by Arab Spring were mostly affected. And on this occasion a private agency in Iran once again renewed the prize offer (with increased amount of 3.3 million dollar) on Rushdie’s head.

Rushdie of course reacted characteristically by saying that blasphemy should be one’s right. It is difficult to say what shape this renewed offer on Rushdie’s head will take. It may remain only a formal announcement. It seems difficult that it would become a raging controversy as it did when Ayatollah Khomeini had declared price on Rushdie’s head. Politically it was very different context.

Ayatollah Khomeini then was a great hero for the Muslim youth as he had declared America a great Satan and America all over the Muslim world then was seen as an evil incarnate who had tried to stop an Islamic revolution and Rushdie was seen as a western agent who had, in the name of human rights, insulted the Prophet of Islam thus trying to weaken Islamic revolution. One cannot expect that kind of reaction from the Muslim youth anymore.

But as for the anti-Islamic film there is a different political context (i.e. the Arab Spring), no less significant than Islamic revolution of Iran. The only difference is that Iranian revolution was actively opposed by America whereas Arab Spring was seen as favourable by American rulers under the pretext of bringing in democracy to the Arab world.

In Libya America and NATO forces had played an active role in overthrowing Gaddafi who had played an anti-American role throughout his life except perhaps during the last phase when he had tried to reconcile with Western powers. In Syria too America, like Libya, is interested in what it chooses to call ‘regime change.’ Needless to say both in Libya and Syria America had not played so innocent a role as it would like the world to believe.

Today both in Libya and Syria Al-Qaeda has become hyper-active but even at the cost of making al-Qaeda quite active, America’s priority is to destroy Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad, the old enemies of America and the only obstacles in total domination of Middle East by America. Both of them have been anti-Israel too and with their elimination, America will be free to promote its interest in the area.

For al-Qaeda too it suits well as both Bashar al-Assad and Gaddafi have been enemies being revolutionaries and seen as anti-Islamic forces by them (i.e. al-Qaeda) Thus both the regimes, ironically, are seen as enemies both by America and al-Qaeda. Thus the violent demonstrations against the film are result of number of factors. What is to be understood is that these demonstrations are less Islamic and more for down to earth factors – political, economic and sociological.

The media, especially western media, is portraying these demonstrations as purely a violent religious act, act of fanaticism particularly because it is Islamic. It is not so simple as the media is portraying it. First of all we must reckon with the oil factor. America’s sole interest in this region is neither Islam, nor democracy, nor dictatorship, for that matter. It is oil, pure and simple.

There is as yet no alternative to oil and most of the oil resources of the world are in this region. America wants to maintain its grip on this region at any cost. The first danger it smelt in the region was the Islamic revolution of Iran. U.S. was exceptionally hostile to Iranian revolution. Not because it was Islamic revolution; it was because Iran was emerging as challenge to American leadership in the region. It was equally hostile to Fatimi’s democratic revolution in early fifties of the last century and to undo that revolution it had used Ayatollah’s against the Fatimi’s secular democratic revolution.

After the then Iranian revolution of 1950s number of left-oriented regimes emerged in Middle East i.e. Iraqi and Syrian (Baath Party-led revolution) and Libyan Revolution in 1969, apart from Jamal Abd al-Nassir’s Young Officers’ coup in Egypt in mid-fifties. Nasser’s revolution was no less dangerous than that of Iranian revolution in 1979. It nationalized Suez Canal and France, Britain and Israel invaded Egypt morally supported by USA. It was Soviet Union which threatened these powers and made them retreat.

The Arab Spring, was also seen similarly an opportunity by America to intervene and do away with ‘enemies’ like Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad. But like before, it is not as simple as America thinks. The demonstrations are aimed politically against American interests in the region. Of course it is utterly foolish to make such film which has been described as ‘idiotic’ or utterly simplistic.

It is true the American regime, much less the people, had anything to do with making of the film and so one wonders why kill its ambassador and consular staff or why demonstrate against America. These demonstrations do not mean that people put responsibility of the film on America. It clearly means that they have utterly hostile feelings towards American domination and repeated interference in the region. They want America to get out of the region.

Unfortunately America does not want to learn lessons. After Libya it rushed to the aid of rebel not for its love of democracy in Syria but for its hatred of the enemy i.e. Bashar al-Assad. America is fully aware of the fact that al-Qaeda is trying to capture the rebel forces. But it thinks Bashar al-Assad is much greater enemy and it can take care of al-Qaeda later. Let not America think that the rebels in Syria would feel grateful to America after success of rebellion. These rebels too carry anti-American feelings hidden in their hearts and when time comes they will manifest it as it happened in Libya.

Many moderate Muslim intellectuals are saying that moderates should speak out against violent demonstrations. I fully agree with this viewpoint. We must oppose violence anywhere and in whatever form. Moreover it is not people of America who are to be blamed for events like anti-Islamic film. It is after all small number of right wingers who are compulsive haters of Islam.

Also, people of America like any other people of the world, are manipulated by the powerful media to think that American foreign policy is right in the Middle Eastern region. For them the principles, and not the interests, play role in framing these policies. Also, hatred is not the right answer for hatred. As a Muslim and as a Gandhian I think love and understanding is the right answer.

To prevent such violent demonstrations the Imams should play creative role in Friday sermons. They should explain to Muslims what are Islamic values and why they should desist from such demonstrations. Also, as a value we oppose US policies, not America or American people. American principles are as great as any other principles. Among those principles are freedom of expression and freedom to follow ones dictates of conscience. There can be no compromise of that.

But this is possible only when our Imams are highly educated and capable of analyzing facts as they are. The kinds of Imams we have are illiterate in matters other than Islamic Shari’ah and Islamic theology. Imams play very significant role in lives of Muslims, especially in Asian and African countries. Muslim intellectuals and moderate Muslims should see to it that Imams should not only be Islamically educated but also in other matters as they influence Muslim thinking on socio-political matters through their sermons on Friday.

The Muslim media also has to play highly responsible role in such matters. We see that Muslim media also, like Imams of the mosques, play to the gallery. Today we are living in the age of democracy and in democracy media plays very important role. We know western media too does not play responsible role. On one hand it displays deeply rooted prejudices and on the other, it guards the interests of multi-national corporations.

But if we believe in Islamic values of justice and peace we have to suppress our anger and display more patience failing which “Islam stands for peace” will become mere rhetoric and such display of violence on all such occasions does show it is mere rhetoric. As good Muslims we should go beyond mere rhetoric and show in action that we stand for justice and peace.

--

Asghar Ali Engineer is a Mumbai-based writer.

Link: Twocircles.net

  

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