Comments

I’m an Aussie. I disagree with the death penalty anywhere. But I think the overall Australian government and vocal people’s responses are spiced with sentimentality, nationalism, some arrogance, and double standards.
Indonesia’s laws specify the death penalty for certain drug offences. The Bali Nine knew that, took their chances, got caught. Had they not got caught they’d have enjoyed the profits and stood by while a bunch of Aussie kids and other consumers of cannabis did some damage, perhaps real harm, to their mental health. I’ll bet they wouldn’t have lost sleep over that. Get Indonesia to abolish the death penalty for sure. But the diplomatic pressure Australia has applied to the Indonesians reflects pure colonial style arrogance. It took the death penalty for 2 Aussie kids to motivate them to talk to the Indonesians publicly about this.
Secondly the Australian response has been about the 2 Aussies almost predominantly. Never mind the other nationalities being executed: they don’t count, they’re not Aussies. A true humanitarian appeal? Or a national appeal only which just so happens to appeal to many patriotic Aussies: looking after our boys. This Aussie government needed a boost in the polls after a series of gaffs by the PM, hard to ignore that right now.
And the last point: double standards. US troops and security specialists operate on Aussie soil. The U.S. is Australia’s biggest military ally. According to a current online source 13 people have been executed in the US in 2015 till April 15. If we are so against the death penalty where’s the Aussie government lobbying the Americans? No chance, wouldn’t be in our national interests to annoy the U.S.

Indonesia has indeed made some great strides since 1998, but in some ways it has been going backward in more recent years. For example, the field of presidential candidates has narrowed at each election for the past decade. There were five candidates in 2004, three in 2009 and only two in 2014. For a country with such a large population but without a more or less rigid two-party system such as the USA has, this limiting of the range of candidates is very unfortunate. Let’s hope the new electoral legislation operating in 2019 will result in a broadening of the field of candidates.

As Jokowi reveals himself increasingly to be a moral and intellectual lightweight, it is becoming clear that the Indonesian people faced a true Hobson’s choice last year.

As for the Jokowi-Kalla duo, the president and vice-president seem as dysfunctional together as were Megawati and Hamzah Haz, perhaps Indonesia’s oddest couple, a dozen years ago. Kalla is unlikely to play the dynamising role that he performed for the slower-moving president who first chose him as his running-mate. Maybe he is too old, or maybe Jokowi thinks that he himself, to quote another inarticulate president, is the ‘decider’.

In another respect, the recent evolution of Indonesian politics has shown how hard it is to register ‘great strides’. Is there any party that has been set up since Indonesia returned to a democratic regime that can be held up as a model for its integrity, the competence and honesty of its representatives and its determination to resist being sucked into the corruption at the core of the political system?

There is a great deal of idealism and the spirit of self-sacrifice in the NGO sphere in Indonesia, for which the late Munir has been one of the most emblematic figures. But so little of these qualities needed for a healthy body politic survive in the arena of mainstream, representative politics.

For Michael Laffan,

Thanks for your contribution. I will press on with my desperate battle to validate myself.

It is a funny sort of self-declared Counterintelligence Officer if he doesn’t know who you are Ken … still, if he says he is pretty good at what he does then we should accept his self-validation.

Ken,

Mbai is M’bai as phonetically translated.
It is rather hard to pronounce two consonants together. Anyway, as he is from Central Sulawesi, you are welcome to ask him how he pronounces it, vernacularly. I don’t care that much.

Please feel free to know whomever you wish. Your apparent need to validate yourself is your own. I only pointed out that, unless you are cleared for access to highly classified Indonesian information, you could not possibly know everything about JI or Amrozi, and if indeed you do know Mukhlas’ widow, that would make YOU subject to some questioning by not only Indonesian authorities, but I am sure others would also be interested. By the way, his real name is Huda Abdul bin Haq (Mukhlas), since you seem obsessive about names. I will say no more. Enjoy your contacts if they give you some pleasure and importance, but your assessment of Amrozi is rather primitive, as any Indonesia expert knows, most JI members of importance, constantly brag and joke around, even in court. In fact, what makes Ansyaad more competent than his Malaysian counterparts is that he can be taken seriously. As for Islamic extremists, they are rather unstable and many are voluble by nature. Now, what they have actually done in their “spare” time is a whole other matter, and I do know pretty much what they do, in their spare time. And, yes, I was born in these parts, 56 years ago. Cheers.

In the same way, I also know one of Amrozi’s brothers, one of his half-brothers and one of his sisters-in-law, namely Mukhlas’s widow. The fact that I have interviewed these people doesn’t,of course, guarantee that my opinion about Amrozi, whom I never met, is correct.

By the way, Mbai’s name doesn’t have an apostrophe.

Legal consistency is a sign of a developed culture? So Gulf states are developed because they are legally consistent in the ir application of Hudud?

So people should vote for the candidate that is the most extreme nationalist message, because he is strong enough to resist the nationalist urges right? But what happens if he really means it. He started nationalize foreign companies. You will see the Indonesian economy tank.

Its silly logic.

The essence of the festival is still best observed in smaller towns or villages.

In the big city like Yangon where most converge, display an ugly spasm of misogyny, sadism, masochism, and yes especially this year “extreme Inebriation” along with shameful lasciviousness due to better economy.

The result is a filled up of the Yangon morgue beyond capacity.

Ken,

This is all irrelevant. Many Indonesians act macho in court. So did ABB and so did many others; it’s all an act and mean little.
As a Counterintelligence Officer, I know more about Amrozi’s actions, public and private personas. You rely on Open Sources; I rely on personal knowledge and classified information. It’s my profession and I am pretty good at it. Amrozi is not just a class clown. Far from it, his antics in court notwithstanding. Indonesia media is hardly the same as the recently retired Lt Gen Ansyaad M’bai, please don’t even compare them. Unless you know Ansyaad, then you don’t know the reality of the situation.