Politics, Religion, and Sex

I’ll forgo a description of what happens when the person who is to meet you waits for the wrong plane. In the category of Lessons Learned, I recommend that when giving instructions over the telephone to someone who doesn’t understand English very well, ask the listener to repeat what was said.

In my first impressions of Indonesia I’m going to comment on politics, religion, and sex. A few hundred words on each subject will cover the entirety of my knowledge on each subject.

Today’s topic is politics. Indonesians are thrilled that the incoming president of the United States spent his boyhood in Jakarta. The one sentence in English that every Indonesian knows is “Obama!”

There are at least three things that may be conveyed by that one-word sentence. The speaker might mean that he is glad, as one person said, that “the new American president ate our food as a boy and drank our water.” The speaker might mean that the reputation of America has been enhanced by showing how democracy at its best reflects the will of the people. And the speaker may mean, as one said, that he feels hope for his own children living in a better world.
It’s a refreshing change, as an American traveling abroad, to find yourself being received so warmly. Slava and I have felt like celebrities, because everywhere we go people want to have their pictures taken with us. Of course, we look like gentle giants to the diminutive Indonesians.

We’ve had a crash course in the political history of Indonesia, but I’m only going to comment on some points related to the state motto, “Unity through Diversity.” It has much the same connotation as “E Pluribus Unum,” but Indonesians came to this doctrine of respecting diversity in a different way.

During the centuries of colonial rule by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, English, and Japanese, the main strategy for maintaining control was “divide and conquer.” Where there were domestic rivals, a colonial power might support the weaker leader, who would have to cooperate with the foreigners after beating his rival. Independence came only when Indonesian leaders worked together for a larger good. People united after the shared suffering of the Japanese occupation during World War II.

Our tour guide in Jakarta told us that during World War II, the Japanese forced his father to dump truckloads of rice into the bay, with the intent of killing Indonesians by starvation. The Indonesian troops the Japanese had trained to fight the Allies had turned on the Japanese, and the Japanese in turn punished the civilian population.

I’ll skip over Suharto’s 35-year-rule after independence and the strong men who followed him. True democracy in Indonesia, with vigorous political parties and a free press, is only about 10 years old. Corruption is still endemic, yet it’s being fought in multiple ways. For instance, both the person giving a bribe and taking a bribe are subject to penalties. Just this week a government ministry was forced to close a website that had been outsourced to a private company for the processing of payments. It seems that there was some skimming action going on.

Indonesia has a presidential election coming up in July. I know that I’ll be paying attention and cheering from the sidelines for good government. The 220 million people here deserve it. And as the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia has importance.

The current conflict in Gaza causes anguish here. Indonesia wants to send humanitarian aid to Palestinians, and fervently hopes that there can be a UN-brokered cease-fire. But to my surprise the reaction isn’t entirely anti-Israel. There is recognition of provocation by Hamas, and so the blame to Israel goes largely for the use of “disproportionate force.”

I’ll excerpt some letters from today’s issue of The Jakarta Post. The theme, you’ll see, is anti-Arab.

“Why should we waste time, money, and effort to defend Palestinians when their fellow Arabs cannot? Arabs, especially those in Saudi Arabia, look down on us because too many of us work there as maids or laborers. Why don’t we put our energy instead into creating jobs back home so nobody has to go to Arabian countries to work…”

“Why should we help when the rich Arabs cannot help their own? Did we see Arab volunteers coming to help us during the tsunami?”

“The Muslim leaders of the world bear full responsibility for the conflict in Gaza and in the Middle East in general. They have not made any real effort to eradicate this problem. By being passive and indifferent they are actively creating generation after generation of human suffering… They have done nothing to eradicate the refugee camps, leaving their ‘brothers and sisters’ stranded in limbo, not creating jobs, education, or health care and leaving them with no identity, no dignity, and no hope for a brighter tomorrow. They prefer to build islands in the sea, create seas on land, and purchase property in London and New York…”

“…Gaza was fully liberated and the Palestinians had full autonomy over the territory, yet they continued with acts of aggression against Israel – why? Israel has tried calling on them to negotiate and uphold a cease-fire numerous times, but to no avail. It’s time Muslim leaders wake up and understand violence is not a practical solution, especially when Muslim groups do these acts in the name of Allah, which only desecrates his holy name!”

Tomorrow I’ll talk about religion in Indonesia.