Mesut Özil Walks Away from German Team Alleging Racism on a Sad Day for German Football

By Preity Uupala
Observer Staff Writer

Germany's world cup failure blamed on Özil, despite his stellar record over his career

Twitter

Turkey president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan says today in Ankara that he is glad with Mesut Özil's stance: "I called him on Monday night and we talked. They simply can't stomach the fact that he took a picture with me. His attitude was nationalistic. I kiss his eyes and I stand by him"

One of the most scandalous stories to hit the soccer world was yesterday's news surrounding mid-fielder Mesut Özil's departure from the German national team due to "racial and disrespect". A shocking departure following the 2018 world cup in Russia, of Arsenal star Özil, who also played for Germany and is of Turkish descent.

In a statement, Özil writes: " It is with a heavy heart and after much consideration that because of recent events, I will no longer be playing for Germany at an international level whilst I have this feeling of racism and disrespect"- Mesut Özil.

There may have been accusations that Germany's spectacular failure this world cup can be blamed due to his poor performance. But it seems ludicrous. The German team lost because they played poorly and lost as a collective team. No one player can be blamed and management and coach are equally at fault.

He made a spectacular statement" When we win, I am German; when we lose, I am an immigrant". The issue here is not one of his performance, but a much deeper issue of racism and abuse.

It all started in may 2018 when Özil met and posed for photography with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and signed a t-shirt with the words "For my president". Ozil was quick to justify that this was a courteous gesture on his part and he was not making any sort of political endorsement saying that "It would have been disrespecting the roots of my ancestry", had he not made the gesture. But the photo did not go down well with German media and the German Football Association (FA) who heavily criticized it and left Özil out for a lot of the pre-world cup promo activities.

It is a sad day for Germany because this idea of an integrated German team, one that is inclusive, diverse and respectful is under attack. The fact that one of the most high profile players does not feel comfortable representing the national team makes it a huge story. Özil has always claimed that he has two hearts: one German and one Turkish.

However, these are very tense times for Germany regarding race tensions and a story like this falls right into the arms of those who wish to use it for political gain. It is a shame to see far-right parties like the AFD, use this as a part of their identity politics strategy in an attempt to showcase that diversity and immigration simply don't work. Yes, there are serious issues with immigration and refugee influx, especially where there is no integration or assimilation on the part of those who take refuge. And in many ways, this human refugee experiment has failed Europe and especially Germany creating all sorts of internal conflicts and tensions.

But with Özil, this is hardly the case here. Far from bringing a refugee, he was born in Germany as was his father, speaks perfect German, grew up here and for all intents and purposes is very German, he is an example of the diversity that has triumphed not failed.

               

What makes things worse is that other foreign players in the German national team like Miroslav Klose and Joseph Podolski are always referred to as German and not German-Polish and yet Özil was always German- Turkish, because of his Muslim heritage.

For someone who has worn that German jersey 92 times scoring 23 goals internationally, being a vital part of the 2014 team that lifted the world cup trophy and who has been German player of the year 5 times, this is a sad ending to a wonderful career. He has done a lot of charity work and has been a great role model on and off the field but all of this seems to be of little significance and consequence for some in the German media and FA.

There have been mixed reactions; from a global outrage for soccer fans around the world who applauded Özil for standing up to racism, to some saying German Football is better off without him, to some in the German Football Association downplaying it and reducing it to poor performance instead of a much more larger, sensitive race problem and to some who realize something precious has been lost.

Once a hero, Mesut Özil's now just a scapegoat for racists. And his suddenly abbreviated Germany career serves as a microcosm of Europe's shifting stance on immigration.

The German FA seems to downplay the racial issues and condensing it to Özil poor performance in recent times. The Bayern Munich President, Uli Hoeness, and the German FA have been harsh to come back with scandalous quotes that Özil performance has slumped in the recent past and that he does not belong on the national team. It blames Germany's world cup failure down to one player and seems to erode Özil's stellar record over his career. You may not think he was playing his best soccer in recent times but a total ignorance over the racial issue is very reckless for Germany moving forward.

It shows wanted disregard for a serious issue of racial tensions not just in the team but the nation as well. It shows a lack of understating the difference inherent in a player and shoving that difference back into their face rather than protecting them from various racial abuses and mistreatment, subtle, as they may have been. Perhaps this shows the deeply embedded racism that still exists within the DFA and in Germany. How does this affect the future Mesut Özil who dream of playing for Germany; they may now think twice. Time will only tell.

Mesut Özil will continue to play for English club Arsenal and possibly create more history there but the real loser here is German football.

Santa Monica Observer

Mesut Özil Walks Away from German Team Alleging Racism on a Sad Day for German Football

Mesut Özil Walks Away from German Team Alleging Racism on a Sad Day for ... One of the most scandalous stories to hit the soccer world was yesterday's news surrounding mid-fielder Mesut Öz...

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Indonesia | 'I felt disgusted': inside Indonesia's fake Twitter account factories

People attend a rally to show support for jailed former governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama - known by his nickname Ahok. Photograph: Bay Ismoyo/AFP/Getty Images via The Guardian

Kate Lamb in Jakarta

Monday, 23 Jul 2018

To pass them off as real, Alex would enliven his fake accounts with dashes of humanity. Mixed up among the stream of political posts, his avatars – mostly pretty young Indonesian women – would bemoan their broken hearts and post pictures of their breakfasts.

But these fake accounts were not for fun; Alex and his team were told it was "war".

"When you're at war you use anything available to attack the opponent," says Alex from a cafe in central Jakarta, "but sometimes I felt disgusted with myself."

For several months in 2017 Alex, whose name has been changed, alleges he was one of more than 20 people inside a secretive cyber army that pumped out messages from fake social media accounts to support then Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known as "Ahok", as he fought for re-election.

"They told us you should have five Facebook accounts, five Twitter accounts and one Instagram," he told the Guardian. "And they told us to keep it secret. They said it was 'war time' and we had to guard the battleground and not tell anyone about where we worked."

The Jakarta election – which saw the incumbent Ahok, a Chinese Christian, compete against the former president's son Agus Yudhoyono, and the former education minister, Anies Baswedan – churned up ugly religious and racial divisions. It culminated in mass Islamic rallies and allegations that religion was being used for political gain. Demonstrators called for Ahok to be jailed on contentious blasphemy charges.

The rallies were heavily promoted by an opaque online movement known as the Muslim Cyber Army, or the MCA, which employed hundreds of fake and anonymous accounts to spread racist and hardline Islamic content designed to turn Muslim voters against Ahok.

Alex says his team was employed to counter the deluge of anti-Ahok sentiment, including hashtags that critiqued opposition candidates, or ridiculed their Islamic allies.

Alex's team, comprising Ahok supporters and university students lured by the lucrative pay of about $280 (£212) a month, was allegedly employed in a "luxury house" in Menteng, central Jakarta. They were each told to post 60 to 120 times a day on their fake Twitter accounts, and a few times each day on Facebook.

'Special forces'
In Indonesia – which ranks among the top five users of Twitter and Facebook globally – they are what are known as a "buzzer teams" – groups which amplify messages and creates a "buzz" on social networks. While not all buzzer teams use fake accounts, some do.

Alex says his team of 20 people, each with 11 social media accounts, would generate up to 2,400 posts on Twitter a day.

The operation is said to have been coordinated through a WhatsApp group called Pasukan Khusus, meaning "special forces" in Indonesian, which Alex estimates consisted of about 80 members. The team was fed content and daily hashtags to promote.

"They didn't want the accounts to be anonymous so they asked us to take photos for the profiles, so we took them from Google, or sometimes we used pictures from our friends, or photos from Facebook or WhatsApp groups," says Alex. "They also encouraged us to use accounts of beautiful women to draw attention to the material; many accounts were like that."

On Facebook they even made a few accounts using profile pictures of famous foreign actresses, who inexplicably appeared to be die-hard Ahok fans.

The cyber team was allegedly told it was "only safe" to post from the Menteng residence, where they operated from several rooms.

"The first room was for the positive content, where they spread positive content about Ahok. The second room was for negative content, spreading negative content and hate speech about the opposition," says Alex, who says he chose the positive room.

Many of the accounts had just a few hundred followers, but by getting their hashtags trending, often on a daily basis, they artificially increased their visibility on the platform. By manipulating Twitter they influenced real users and the Indonesian media, which often refers to trending hashtags as barometers of the national mood.

Pradipa Rasidi, who at the time worked for the youth wing of Transparency International in Indonesia, noticed the phenomenon when he was researching social media during the election.

"At first glance they appear normal but then they mostly only tweet about politics," he said.

Rasidi interviewed two different Ahok buzzers, who detailed using fake accounts in the same fashion as that described by Alex. Both declined to speak to the Guardian.

A social media strategist who worked one of Ahok's opponents campaigns said buzzing was a big industry.

"Some people with influential accounts get paid about 20m rupiah ($1,400/£1,069) just for one tweet. Or if you want to get a topic trending for a few hours, that costs between 1-4m rupiah," Andi, who only wanted to be identified by his first name, explained.

Based on its study of the buzzer industry in Indonesia, researchers from the Center for Innovation and Policy Research (CIPG) say all candidates in the 2017 Jakarta election used buzzer teams – and at least one of Ahok's opponents skilfully created "hundreds of bots" connected to supporting web portals.
The Baswedan campaign denied using fake accounts or bots. A Yudhoyono spokesman said they did not breach campaigning rules.

Slander, hatred and hoax
The authorities have made moves to crack down on fake news and the spread of hate speech online but buzzers, which operate in a grey area have largely slipped through the cracks.

Even the central government appears to employ such tactics. The Twitter account @IasMardiyah, for example, which Alex says was utilised by his pro-Ahok buzzer team, now posts a steady flow of government messages and propaganda for President Joko Widodo – mostly retweets about Indonesia's infrastructure and diplomatic successes, or the need to protect national unity.
Featuring an avatar of a young woman wearing a headscarf and sunglasses, the account tweets almost exclusively pro-government content with accompanying hashtags.

Recently the account has posted about Indonesia's election to the United Nations security council, fighting terrorism, boosting agricultural exports, a new airport in West Java, next month's Asian Games, but also on sensitive issues such as West Papua.

A presidential spokesperson was asked for comment by the Guardian, but did not respond.

A spokesperson from Twitter declined to specify how many fake Indonesian accounts it had identified or removed from its platform in the past year. The company said it had "developed new techniques and proprietary machine learning for identifying malicious automation".

The Guardian

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A Catch-22 From China That Could Derail Indonesia's Widodo

To win votes, the Indonesian leader needs Chinese cash to build railways and ports. To build those railways and ports he needs to accept the Chinese workers who are losing him votes

BY JEFFREY HUTTON

​Saturday, 

12 M

​ay ​

2018

On his FIRST visit to Indonesia this month as president of China Railway Corp, Lu Dongfu could have been forgiven if he felt bemused at the delays bedevilling the US$6 billion (HK$47 billion) Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail project that his company was helping build.

Disputes with landowners have meant work has only just started on several sites along the 150km route – three years after Lu's firm beat out Japanese rivals for the train line. By comparison, Lu said in January that the CRC would bring another 3,500km of high-speed rail into operation in China this year alone.

"He said he understands," said one Chinese reporter 

​ ​

accompanying Lu on a visit to a construction site near Jakarta's Halim Airport, where the excavation on tunnel No. 1 is now under way. The reporter did not want to be identified because he was discussing an off-the-record conversation. "He said it's never easy pushing infrastructure projects in democratic countries."

Such comments hint at a growing sensitivity on behalf of Chinese officials towards local laws. If so, that is good news for President Joko Widodo, who has staked his hopes of a second term partly on securing badly needed infrastructure investment from China.

What's made Indonesian students forget the China taboo?

As China has stepped up investment in Indonesia – and more Chinese have taken up jobs here – resentment has driven some locals to protest. That has left Widodo to balance his country's appetite for trains, ports and power plants with protecting local workers as he eyes re-election next April.

"Widodo's relationship with China is shaping up as an election issue," said Keith Loveard, senior analyst with Jakarta-based business risk firm, Concord Consulting. "The relationship with China could turn toxic for him."

So China appears to be cutting Widodo some slack. Without giving details, Li promised to rein in the number of Chinese workers building steel plants, infrastructure and even serving as tour guides in Bali. This week on the popular resort island of Bali, Indonesian tour guides swarmed the immigration office protesting against a surge in the number of Chinese nationals working in the same profession.

Meanwhile, local media reporting on the Morowali special economic zones in Central Sulawesi alleged thousands of illegal workers from China had arrived to help build a nickel smelter and mill capable of churning out 3 million tonnes of steel a year.

While the government has vowed to investigate the reports, the operation – owned by Bintangdelapan Group and China's Dingxin Group – has denied the existence of illegal workers.

With its parks and Dutch colonial architecture, Bandung is a popular weekend getaway.

But the train journey currently takes three and half hours and with heavy peak-hour traffic, car journeys can take twice as long.

Banks on board

​​

When Li's project is complete, it is hoped high-speed trains will catapult up from sweltering Jakarta through 760 metres of mountainous terrain and tea plantations to the balmy hilltop city.

And although some Chinese designs propose a train that can top 350km/h, the four stops along the relatively short track mean it is unlikely to ever reach those speeds.

But the project is going full-steam ahead. Before Li's visit, which wrapped up on Tuesday, the China Development Bank disbursed US$170 million in loans to kick-start work on the technically challenging project – which was a campaign pledge of Widodo's successful 2014 leadership bid.

And by disbursing the funds, China has done Widodo a favour with voters who may be frustrated with the project's glacial progress, said Rene Pattiradjawane, a researcher at the Centre for Chinese Studies in Jakarta.

"China is trying to ensure that Jokowi's pledge is on track, so to speak," Pattiradjawane said, referring to Widodo's widely used nickname.

"The money is there and work is starting."

Rising resentment

But Widodo's reliance on Chinese investment risks backfiring amid the worker influx and the rising resentment it has caused.

China is Indonesia's third biggest investor behind Singapore and Japan. But according to government data, the number of Chinese nationals working in Indonesia has ballooned fivefold over the past decade to more than 24,000. That is nearly twice the number of workers from Japan, which comes a distant second and is the second largest investor.

Indonesia's health scheme dwarfs Obamacare. But there is a problem

Anti-China bias has a long history in Indonesia. Last year Jakarta's former governor, Basuki Purnama, a Christian of Chinese descent, was drummed out of office in an election that turned on religion and race. During his 2014 election bid, Widodo was the victim of smear campaigns alleging his grandfather was Chinese. And this month marks 20 years since rumours of Chinese merchants hoarding rice sparked deadly riots, killing an estimated 1,000.

"The Chinese are acknowledging the number of foreign workers is a huge number," Pattiradjawane said. "This is a statement they are going to do something."

Even so, Widodo cannot afford to drive too hard a bargain with the imported Chinese workers.

While work has started on the train, much of the president's infrastructure wish list remains unfulfilled with the country still chasing more than US$150 billion worth of investment earmarked for his current term. Meanwhile, his administration has pledged US$15 billion for this year alone.

Widodo has promised to spur economic growth to about 7 per cent from about 5 per cent now, in part by investing in infrastructure. But slow trains and tangled ports drive up costs. Indonesian manufacturers spend a quarter of their sales on logistics, according to the World Bank. In Thailand it's 15 per cent.

Promises for growth

Scott Younger, director of Jakarta based consultancy Nusantara Infrastructure, said that to reach Widodo's growth target, Indonesia needed to secure annual investment of about US$90 billion.

"Indonesia needs everything: ports, roads, rail, everything if it hopes to have faster rates of growth."

In April, Luhut Pandjaitan, the country's coordinating minister for maritime affairs, visited Beijing and scraped together about half the US$20 billion of investment he was seeking.

Nevertheless, Widodo has plenty of margin for error. Opinion polls put him in front of his most likely challenger, Prabowo Subianto, whom he beat in 2014 by double digits; inflation is under control; and the jobs that Chinese are said to be taking are largely in remote areas.

Even so, Widodo ignores the issue at his peril. "Any country would be upset," said Concord's Loveard. ■

http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2145806/catch-22-china-could-derail-indonesias-widodo

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What to know about the U.S.-led strikes in Syria

By BLOOMBERG via FORTUNE

The U.S., U.K. and France launched strikes on Syria a week after U.S. President Donald Trump said there would be a "big price" to pay for the apparent use of chemical weapons by President Bashar al-Assad's forces in the town of Douma, an attack that killed scores of civilians. Here's what we know and what's still to come:

1. What did they attack?

Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron and U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May released statements after the attack had begun, saying the missile strikes were focused on chemical weapons sites.

General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that naval and air forces struck three primary targets, including a chemical weapons research facility outside Damascus and a weapons storage area near Homs.

The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syrian war through activists on the ground, said installations belonging to the country's elite Republican Guards were also targeted. Russia's defense ministry said more than 100 cruise missiles were fired.

"This was not geared towards weakening Assad's conventional military capabilities," said Kamran Bokhari, a senior fellow with the Center for Global Policy in Washington. It was "a little more than the symbolic strike from last year but steering clear of any major operation."

2. How did Syria react?

Syria said the strikes failed to achieve their goal and breached international law. Syrian air defenses hit several incoming missiles, state-run media said. Analysts and diplomats said the strike was unlikely to shake Assad's hold on power or change the trajectory of the conflict.

The attack "was a victory for Syria," former lawmaker Sharif Shehadeh said by phone from Damascus. "Instead of weakening the government, it only made it stronger," he said. "Trump did it to save face."

Assad's allies, including Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah group, also condemned the strikes. Iran's Supreme Leader called the attack a crime and the country's Revolutionary Guard Corps said it gave "the resistance a more open hand," although it did not threaten to retaliate.

3. Are the attacks over?

May in her statement called it a "limited and targeted strike." U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that "right now, this is a one-time shot and I believe it has sent a very strong message to dissuade him, to deter him." The U.K. Defense Ministry said the strikes were "successful."

Still, Trump warned in his televised address of a readiness to "sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents," though he didn't specify what that meant.

4. How did Russia respond?

Russia denounced the attacks as aggression against its ally, but there was no sign of an immediate military response.

"Our worst apprehensions have come true. Our warnings have been left unheard," Anatoly Antonov, Russia's ambassador to the U.S., wrote on Facebook. "Insulting the President of Russia is unacceptable and inadmissible," he added, an apparent reference to Trump's mention of President Vladimir Putin in his speech.

The Kremlin released a statement from Putin saying the strike was an "act of aggression against a sovereign state which is in the front line in the fight against terrorism," and that there was no proof a chemical weapons attack had taken place.

The strikes appeared to have taken place far from Russia's bases near the Syrian coast. U.S. officials said they gave Russia no specific warnings of the attacks or the targets, but used the usual hotline with Moscow's military to ensure the airspace was clear. Still, French Defense minister Florence Parly told reporters that Russian authorities were warned ahead of time, as proof the action would be limited to specific targets.

French authorities said the allies don't seek any military escalation, nor confrontation with Russia. Macron, who called Putin on Friday to discuss the situation, still plans to travel to a security conference in St Petersburg in May, where they are expected to meet, an official said.

5. What about the U.K.?

May on Saturday made her case for action in the face of opposition from much of the public and the Labour Party, saying in a further statement it was highly likely Assad's regime had used chemical weapons.

"We would have preferred an alternative path, but in this case there was none," May said. "We cannot allow the use of chemical weapons to become normalized."

She authorized the strikes without parliamentary backing and it's not clear she would have got it if she'd sought it. Parliament refused U.K. participation in a planned punitive raid on Syria in 2013, one of the reasons then-U.S. President Barack Obama called it off.

May will address Parliament — where she doesn't have a majority — next week. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong anti-war campaigner, has accused May of " waiting for instructions from President Donald Trump."

6. And Germany?

While Germany did not take part in the action against Syria, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday she supported steps taken by the allies.

http://fortune.com/2018/04/14/why-did-we-bomb-syria-attack/

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Algeria military plane crash: 257 dead after military transport aircraft crashes near Algiers

Nearly 260 people including members of Western Sahara's Polisario independence movement were killed when an Algerian military plane crashed soon after takeoff, officials said.

TV footage showed crowds gathering around the smoking and flaming wreckage near the Boufarik military base, near the capital Algiers.

A line of white body bags could be seen on the ground next to what media said was a Russian Ilyushin transport plane

A total of 257 people died in the crash, the Algerian defence ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said 247 passengers and 10 crew members were killed.

A member of Algeria's ruling FLN party told the Ennahar TV station the dead included 26 members of Polisario, an Algerian-backed group fighting for the independence of neighbouring Western Sahara, a territory also claimed by Morocco in a longrunning dispute.

Dzair TV said five people were in a critical state, but it was unclear whether they were inside the plane when it crashed. 

Footage from the scene showed thick black smoke coming off the field, as well as ambulances and Red Crescent vehicles arriving at the site. 

The tailfin of a plane could be seen above olive trees, with smoke and flames rising from the wreckage.

Algerian soldiers oversee the wreckage of the military plane after it crashed in Boufarik,
near the Algerian capital, Algiers (AP)

Several witnesses told Ennahar TV they saw flames coming out of one of the planes' engines just before it took off. One farmer said some passengers jumped out of the aircraft before the accident. 

"The plane started to rise before falling," an unidentified man lying on what seemed to be a hospital bed told Ennahar TV. "The plane crashed on its wing first and caught fire." 

Farouk Achour, chief spokesman for the civil protection agency, said the plane was carrying soldiers.

He said some passengers were "extracted with deep burns caused by the fuselage catching fire." 

The cause of the crash remained unclear and an investigation has been opened, Algeria's defence ministry said.

The ministry said most of the victims were soldiers and their relatives and the victims' bodies were transported to the Algerian army's central hospital in the town of Ain Naadja for identification. 

More than 100 people dead after military plane crashes in Algeria

More than 100 people dead after military plane crashes in Algeria Samuel Osborne More than 100 people were killed when an Algerian military plane crashed soon after takeoff. Emergency services ...

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Audrey Young: Visiting leaders show disrespect by failing to share platform with Jacinda Ardern

By Audrey Young

It was a shame that Barack Obama refused to allow any meaningful media opportunities on his trip to New Zealand but he had an excuse given that it was a private trip.

Indonesia President Joko Widodo had no such excuse. It was shameful that on a state visit he failed to present himself in some manner to the public of New Zealand.

When preparing for the visit, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade raised the issue of holding a joint press conference alongside Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, but the Indonesians declined.

Ardern will be too diplomatic to describe it as an insult, but it is one.

When New Zealand leaders visit other countries, they are expected to behave according to the protocols and values of that country. The same should apply for visitors to New Zealand.

Two leaders fronting together and talking about the relationship is an implicit display of respect for the other leader and country.

The opposite applies. To decline to do so is implicitly disrespectful to Ardern and New Zealand.

The Government needs to send a swift message to Mfat that such events for future VIP visits must be raised not by invitation but in the context of an expectation.

It need not be expressed in terms of compulsion but an obligation except for exceptional circumstances.

If Ardern does not make this clear now, Mfat will continue to present it as a take-it-or-leave-it option for the visiting country to dictate.

The Widodo visit followed a high-level visit the previous week from Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, again during which no press conference was organised. 

These two examples should not set a pattern for the rest of her premiership.

Holding a joint public press event was an expectation for VIPs under both Helen Clark and John Key's leadership.

In 2001, when Clark was hosting the first Indonesia President to visit New Zealand in 29 years, Abdurrahman Wahid, he surprised everyone at their press conference by talking about the problems with corruption in his country's justice system, including the judiciary.

It was in the context of questions about justice for the killers of Private Leonard Manning, who was killed on patrol near the West Timor border.

Setting an expectation that VIPs front will definitely leave them open to questions about potentially sensitive areas, West Papua in the case of Widodo

But if they don't have the skill to handle those, maybe they should not be in politics.

It is not New Zealand or Mfat's job to protect VIPs from sensitive issues.

NZ Herald

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Accidents mar Indonesia's fast-and-furious infrastructure program

By ERWIDA MAULIA, Nikkei staff writer

Deadly 'construction failures' put Widodo in hot seat ahead of elections

Five workers were injured when a box girder they were installing collapsed at an LRT construction site in East Jakarta. (Photo by Takaki Kashiwabara)

A string of accidents is threatening to undermine Indonesian President Joko Widodo's signature infrastructure development drive. Though the causes remain unclear, the president's political rivals have seized on the problems ahead of local and presidential elections, blasting the administration for pushing projects too hastily.

Just a month after Widodo opened a railway connection to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, heavy rain triggered a landslide at a rail underpass near the airport on Feb. 5. Tumbling concrete and soil crushed a passing Honda Brio, killing the female driver and injuring the other passenger. Railway operations were suspended for three days.

The landslide occurred a day after a deadly accident at a construction site for a commuter rail line in Central Jakarta. A heavy crane fell over, killing four workers and injuring at least one other. 

These are the latest in a series of at least 14 accidents involving infrastructure projects over the past several months -- 10 in Jakarta and its suburbs. The total death toll stands at nine.

The troubles have coincided with a pickup in construction, after sluggish funding and progress in the first half of Widodo's presidency. Most of the cases are still under investigation, but skepticism is building over the quality of the infrastructure and the government's ability to fulfill its ambitions. 

Some observers see a combination of factors at play: the unprecedented scale and variety of the projects, coupled with pressure on builders to complete them quickly -- in many cases by 2019, when Widodo is expected to seek re-election.

Consider the Jakarta LRT, the capital's first light rail transit network. The project should have been launched in 2015, but due to funding and other kinks, construction did not begin until January 2017. Despite the long delay, the target for completion was left unchanged -- before the Asian Games in August. The government wants athletes to be able to use the LRT to avoid the city's notorious traffic jams.

"The train carriages will arrive in April," Jakarta Gov. Anies Baswedan told reporters in December. "God willing, [the line] will be able to start operations in July at the latest."

On Jan. 22, however, workers were installing a box girder for elevated tracks near a velodrome in East Jakarta when the girder collapsed, injuring five of them.

Franky Rivan, an analyst at Mirae Asset Sekuritas Indonesia, is among those who believe rushed work is to blame.

"The LRT that will connect the velodrome, [built by] Wijaya Karya, is the fastest LRT construction because it is aimed for the Asian Games," said Rivan, who has been following state contractors involved in infrastructure projects, such as Wijaya Karya and Waskita Karya. "But they shouldn't have rushed the completion."

Opposition politicians took the opportunity to criticize the Widodo administration's election-oriented deadlines. Lawmakers are reportedly planning to summon and interrogate government officials and construction companies over the "construction failures."

"Simultaneous developments running on tight deadlines surely afflict moral burden to anyone, including construction companies," said lawmaker Nurhasan Zaidi of the Prosperous Justice Party. "The government must bear responsibility."

Public Works Minister Basuki Hadimuljono also pointed to the human element. 

"We observed that many of the accidents happened on Saturday [or] Sunday," Hadimuljono told Kompas TV in an interview. "So there may have been carelessness, which we must acknowledge as human error."

Police have blamed human error in at least one case -- the deadly crane accident on Feb. 4. The operator of the crane has been detained and named as a suspect, with the authorities ruling out equipment failure.

Dradjat Hoedajanto, chairman of the Indonesian Society of Civil and Structural Engineers, spoke broadly about an unprepared labor force. Of the 8.1 million construction workers in Indonesia, less than 10% have proper certification, according to the Public Works Ministry.

"Human resources in the construction sector are probably not well-prepared to do so many [jobs] and have to complete them in such a short time," Hoedajanto said. "There is a shortage of qualified workers across all levels -- including laborers and engineers -- so they are overstretched."

Obfuscation of the investigations has also prompted whispers about unsuitable appointments of contractors and subcontractors, which Hoedajanto said are frequently based on "forced efficiency."

"Winners of the bids are often those who offered the cheapest prices," he said. "That's problematic."

Five state-owned construction companies -- Waskita Karya, Wijaya Karya, Adhi Karya, Hutama Karya and Pembangunan Perumahan -- have snapped up the majority of the transportation projects. Private builders have found themselves with only a small slice of the pie, despite the government's calls for their participation in the infrastructure program. 

The state companies have only said they are looking into the accidents. The Public Works Ministry, meanwhile, has so far only issued a reprimand to Waskita, the contractor behind nearly half the accident-hit projects.

The reprimand was intended to nudge the company to "fix the work system and address [the issue of] construction supervisors, so they will be more careful," said Arie Setiadi Moerwanto, the ministry's director general. "Waskita has followed up [on the reprimand]. Let's say that they've changed the system."

The ministry last month formed a Construction Safety Committee to investigate the accidents and evaluate related projects. It also plans to set up a Building Safety Committee to evaluate the infrastructure once construction is completed.

But apart from brief halts of the affected projects, there is no indication that the government is willing to change its fast-and-furious approach.

Widodo last week launched the construction of what will be the first toll road in West Sumatra -- part of the Trans-Sumatra project, which will connect the southern and northern tips of the island with a total of 2,800km of pavement.

NIKKEI ASIAN REVIEW

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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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