Kami Anti Indon

Today is the Gregorian New Year of 2009 and despite its wintry cold (minus 3 Celsius), dark and dull, I woke up early to read my fajr prayer. I quickly came across this article on detik.com about this blog while checking the news.

In the revitalised spirit of writing I’m commenting this notorious piece of blog written by an unhappy anti Javanese fellow (read her other blog about Indon=Javanese, and not Malay living in Sumatera) who enjoyed Indonesian government’s subsidy while doing her degree at Universitas Airlangga (how come she passed the entrance test?), Surabaya, East Java.

From this fact alone, we can conclude that she is a coward as she could have cleared all her misunderstanding about Javanese while living in Java. She is a hypocrite as she hated the people and the country, yet she enjoyed the subsidy she received for his study. Anyway, I myself probably am not the best jugde of somebody’s character, but from the idiotic images portraying Indons as being terrorists and pig lovers and the tone of language she is using, I guess she is simply a racist bigot glorifying Malay’s supremacy over Javanese.

FYI it was Javanese and not Malay, who ran the Hindu Majapahit empire which once controlled a territory as far as Cambodia in the west and northern Australia and most pacific islands in the east. The most succesful Malay kingdom of Buddhist Srivijaya whose capital was in Palembang, South Sumatera, was defeated by Siam (Thailand) and its king was exiled to die in Singapore. So, what is there to glorify?

Also FYI Javanese are very sociable and caring, even though they are comprising of more than 70% of the population, they do not mind adopting Malay language as their national language. So, a Malay who can hate a very nice and humble Javanese is most probably the one who suffers from low esteem syndrome.

Last but not least, I’m not a Soeharto’s follower as I don’t agree with some of his decisions. Yet, we have to put him in a bigger and better perspective and appreciate his contributions to the betterment of the country, and not only cursing him for the corruption, collusion and nepotism that once drove him gone astray.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Ten Things I Hate About Indonesia

New year is approaching. Let us take a quick recap on our environment: what is good and what is bad; and hope that things will change only for the better after the holidays. Therefore I present you with the ten things I hate and love about Indonesia and Hungary. I will start from “Ten Things I Hate About Indonesia” first…

comment: I am still waiting for your “10 things I love about Indonesia”… and of course about your beloved new country: Hungary

1. Corruption
How can you not hate it when the former president is still holding the world’s record for being the biggest corruptor ever with US$ 35 billion? The worst is that he’s still out there—free to watch his favorite show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and suddenly has to be treated in hospital everytime he hears attempt of bringing his case to the court. However his half brother will be spending the next four years in jail for another corruption case; while his youngest son, Tommy Suharto, was put behind the bars in 2000 for murdering a judge. What a big happy family!

comment: Nobody’s perfect, but God! Who can say that George Bush Sr or Jr are not corrupt? The main obstacle of punishing corruptors is proofing that they are guilty by court proceeding. Even the way an evidence is gathered and presented must be correct. Regarding  Soeharto’s family, I don’t think they are happy with all those haram money. In fact, we have seen how the family members fought each others for government contracts. Rumours say that even their mother was accidentally shot dead when two siblings were involved in a heated confrontation over a government project. The fact that  Soeharto’s half brother and his youngest son were punished has proven that justice is still prevalent in Indonesia.

2. Poverty
What can you expect after your president had stolen US$ 35 billion? What else but poverty:
More than half of Indonesia’s 210 million people are vulnerable to poverty. In 2002, the World Bank estimated 53% of the population – some 111 million – live below the international standard poverty line of US$ 2 a day.

Poverty is not just a matter of inadequate incomes and expenditures on food and daily necessities. Many of the poor and near poor also lack access to basic education, medical services and adequate nutrition. Some 25 million Indonesians are illiterate. Nearly 50 million suffer health problems, a similar number lack access to health facilities. Many communities have inadequate or non-existent basic infrastructure like safe water, adequate sanitation, transport, roads and electricity.

comment: Who fought poverty the hardest? Soekarno? wrong! It was Soeharto, under his Bappenas’ poverty alleviation projects. He tried giving the poor not fish but the boat and net to catch fish, cattle to breed, built dams for irrigation, subsidised farmers for fertiliser, seeds, and other farming materials, even spoke to directly to villagers and farmers to make sure that their need have been fulfilled. Healthcare wise, who built all the Puskesmas (Community Health Centre) in all villages and districts. Soekarno? Well, Soekarno might have started the idea late in 1962, but it was Soeharto who built all those Puskesmas, along with markets, schools and streets. Puskemas is heavily subsidised by the government, with only a couple of hundred rupiahs (1 GBP is approximately 18,000 rupiahs) everyone can have a real doctor (not just a nurse) examining his health problem and with also a couple of hundreds, everyone can buy the prescription right next door. Education wise, it was Soeharto who made the primary education compulsory, meaning it is free and paid by the government. Soeharto also subsidised secondary and tertiary education heavily. It was after the IMF and Soros collaboration that the educational system became expensive by forcing the government to lift most of the subsidies.

3. Natural disaster
And that was not enough. The country has been plagued with the tsunami last year and the earthquakes which sometimes still happens nowadays. They are so common that media no longer pay any attention to them. Nevertheless the effects are still there. Flood, volcanic eruption, and landslide remain constant threats.

comment: and who are you to blame the Javanese for natural disasters?

4. Diseases
SARS, malnutrition, bird flu, dengue fever, anthrax, …I have lost counts.

comment: We live in a very globalised world. Just recently there was an epidemic caused by a new strain of flu which is already common in Singapore. We know many Indonesians work there and commute regularly, so could we blame Chinese Singaporean for the unnecessary suffering? Malnutrition? In Africa maybe? Or in China, due to the contaminated milk? Never heard in Indonesia. When malnutrition takes place shortly after a natural disaster, no one can blame the government.

5. Social gap
It happens anywhere else, so why should it be special, I hear you ask. Whenever I watch Travel Channel’s report on Thailand, for example, most likely it would show the beauty of Bangkok city, the clubs, the leisure. Or in India, you would only see the beautiful women, the exotic dancers, or delicious chicken curry. But in Indonesia you would see poor fishermen hunting whale in order to live—not to earn money, mind you, but simply to live. You would see primitive tribes cook their meal in a poor fireplace inside their huts. And I kept asking myself why didn’t they simply show Tamara Blezynski who earns US$ 4,000 for each episode on her soap opera? Because there are more of these people, that is why. Poverty has been a problem since the beginning of civilization. Yet it is sad to see that nowadays some are still living in that age while their countrymen can afford a life that they could never imagine.

comment: Thailand sells its dodgy (you know what I mean) way of tourism. India sells its bollywood and curry way of tourism. Indonesia also sells its own way of tourism, if you watch it from the same travel channel. In the news, of course their faces are somewhat different: Thai military attacked the terrorists in its southern province or Indian hindus destroyed Babri mosque, and so on. I lived in Pasarminggu before and some of my school friends living next door to Tamara. Well, she is beautiful being half breed and people like to see her beauty on their TVs, what’s wrong with that? Look around you, the most highly paid actresses are they are who are blessed with beautiful faces. There are not many Indonesian women blessed with pretty faces, this is why it is wrong to put her face on tourism ads. But there many million people with beautiful hearts and minds that you can meet easily in Indonesia, therefore it is right to sell their hospitalities, creativities and creations along with the natural beauty of the archipelago. Wait a minute, you supposed to write about social gap. Most experts agree it was India who suffers social gap the most, not only between its Hindu majority and Muslim minority population, but also among their different level of castes. In Thailand, it is similar, the social gap exists not only between the Buddhist majority and Muslim minority, but also between the Chinese in north and Malay in south. In Indonesia, social gap might also exist between the Chinese minority and non Chinese majority population, but you know it yourself it was the Chinese minority who controls 90% of the economy and possesses 95% of the money. It is common to see companies having only Mandarin speaking Chinese employees in Indonesia, could you find any single company like that in Malaysia? No! because Malaysians are anti Chinese, and are a bit racist. Furthermore, this racism is legalised in a company act. Ask any historian of why Malaysian Chinese population in Singapore wanted independence from Malaysia!

6. School
Schools are never for free in Indonesia; especially now with the capitalization era coming. I heard now there is a special regulation which allows state-owned universities to receive students without any tests—the students with high grades in senior high, mind you. However they have to pay between US$ 500 to 7,500; not a small amount in Indonesia. I wonder whose money they would use. Only as a comparison, I learned in a state-owned university in Surabaya, had to compete with thousands of competitors in the entrance test; and paid only around US$ 30 in the end after passing the examinations.

comment: Already answered, the primary education was and probably is still free within the compulsory education policy. It was the lifting or reduction of the indirect subsidies post Soeharto that made them appear to be not free any more.

7. Resource monopoly
Although the amount is decreasing, monopoly still exists. There is only a company which can provide you with fixed phone, for an instance. I have no problem with it; had it been able to reach everyone. But it hasn’t. My parents built a house in 2000, in an area where most people have had their telephone. As soon as the house was ready, they registered themselves for a fixed phone. And even now they haven’t gotten it for the same reason: there are not enough people in that area who request it. As the consequence, they have no internet. That sucks! They have the money, and they want to spend it on the damn fixed phone to chat with their daughter who is living abroad—but they can’t.

Electricity is even worse. There is only one company in the whole country; so everyone must buy the electricity from it. Yet it has been operating at a loss.

comment: PT Telkom the owner of most landline networks is not a state company, it is as profit oriented as any other corporation and it is the share holders who decide its strategy and goals. PT PLN the owner of most electricity networks has been amputated by private electricity for many years. There was a time when PLN had to subsidise the private electricity companies (unfortunately, also during Soeharto’s time) and hence the loss.  In the UK, the US and many other countries, privatisation has been proven wrong. However, it was the money (and politics) behind privatisation that made many governments  fell into this capitalism trap. Regarding the landline problem, I can see that your parents live in a rather rural area where there is no nearby telephone exchange available. To build an exchange is very expensive and PT Telkom has to reach the BEP by having some number of new customers using this exchange. This also happens in those so called developed countries like the UK and the US, unless someone is willing to pay for the expensive investment, a telephone company will not lay down the wire. Even in countries, where the telecom company is owned by the state, there is a principle of maximising utility that they normally apply to decide whether or not to build a new exchange in an isolated area. Nonetheless FYI there are many ways to connect to the Internet in Indonesia, through a mobile phone network, a cable TV network, a wireless ISP, a VSAT satellite ISP, a radio wave ISP etc..

8. City bus
City bus is definitely a nightmare. In Surabaya, there are 111 buses which have been operating for 11-15 years; 170 buses for 16-20 years; and 112 buses for more than 20 years . To give you more views, it is not forbidden to smoke inside; there is no air conditioner; and there is no clear limit on how many passengers can be. At times you have to stand with somebody else’s arm pit only a few cm away from your precious nose; meanwhile you should give way to the street singers who get on and off the bus to earn a living.

comment: Surabaya is full of Javanese. Javanese are very kind hearted people, and even though they don’t smoke they don’t mind being a passive smoker just to be hospitable. FYI there are buses with air con but their fee is far more expensive. There is a road safety regulation regarding the number of passengers a bus can pick, but during peak hours, all just want to get to work in time to avoid cuts in their salaries or wages or students do not want to get detention for tardiness. Is is not nice and definitely not popular for a DLLAJR transport officer to stop a bus and ask some of the passengers to get off the overcrowded bus even for safety reason. People appreciate street singers for their willing to work despite the difficulties they face in finding the right job for their education. Yes, some of them are university graduates stuck in the widespread structural unemployment.

9. Low self esteem
Indonesians are mostly fed up with the frequent stagnation of their life that they think everything comes from abroad must be better: grass is always greener on the other side, true enough. But in Indonesia, it has come to the point where people start to lose their identity. For example, a friend of mine worked as a teacher in an international school among with expatriates from Europe. They all had the same occupation: teacher. While she received US$ 180 despite, her European colleagues got at least US$ 2,000—and nobody would ever say anything about it. Because they are European—expatriates; they deserve more! She did quit after some time; yet many would be more than willing to replace her for that amount.

There are many superficial matters, such as the women who are willing to spend extra cash (and risk some cancer also) to get whiter skin in order to look like the Indonesian beauties; the likes of Tamara Blezynski or Sophia Latjuba. But many more are misleading. People with low education believe that living abroad—no matter how bad—is still better than staying in the country. Thousands of them—mainly women risk to work abroad; as maids. Some receive their money—I read that in Singapore they are paid around US$ 200, that is huge compared to their wage in Indonesia. But it is not rare also that they went home, broke and distressed after having to deal with bureucracy and trafficking and physical harassment and heaven knows what else.

comment: It is not fair I admit, especially in a case where the Indonesian teacher is more qualified than her European colleague. However, this gold treatment for expatriate is also working the other way around. My distant relative – A Javanese working for BP UK, is enjoying all the luxury he can never dream when he was working for BP Jakarta.  His salary is higher than local UK staff, being an international staff. He can send his children to expensive private schools paid by the company. His luxury dwelling, executive car, its petrol, its maintenance etc.. are all paid by the company, and the list of the fringe benefits he receives is not exhausted. Beauty wise, due to the respectable Dutch ladies in the past colonial time were white European, along with the fact that magazines, tv and other media portraying white Caucasian women as possessing the ideal beauty, it is difficult to change the public opinion about it. Why do you think Michael Jackson changed his skin to white? Because he is a woman? No! Because he has got the money to do so! What the government can do is probably to ban the trade of dangerous cosmetics using mercury to whiten skins. Yet, this will definitely create a black market for such cosmetics and inflate their prices without a law enforcement and a transparent law enforcing body. About women worker, I think it is time for the government to deregulate this unsung foreign exchange heroes of international workers and to protect them from the greedy trafficking Mafia taking advantages of their vulnerability.

10. Law for mixed marriage
Despite all the grim facts about the fair country, Zsolt and I would still like to move there. Yet an Indonesian wife cannot sponsor her foreign husband to get a resident visa there: only the company which would hire him could. Afterwards, the resident visa is only valid for a year and it must be renewed in the origin country. Each month, a foreigner must pay US$100 tax.

That was not all. Children cannot have Indonesian citizenship until they reach 18, with the father’s permission. Therefore they would be treated as tourist in their mother’s land along with the taxation system which is way too expensive for native Indonesian. A rumor said that there may be new rule that a foreign man must pay US$ 50,000 in order to be able to marry an Indonesian woman. That sucks!

comments: I’ve never heard of $100 foreigner tax, but any policy of taxing foreigners more than citizens is really not fair and can be classified as racist under the European law. However due to some circumstances, the UK government still charges International students university fees at least three times more than local ones. This is downright racism, especially as the UK is now part of the Europen community, this policy should be abolished. Regarding your Hungarian husband, I believe once your husband Zsolt has become an Indonesian tax payer, he will pay tax as what  Indonesians pay. He can register to be an Indonesian tax payer after 180 days living in Indoesia. Immigration is one of the most non transparent government bodies, so check the regulation carefully. Most foreigners I know use lawyers to sort out their immigration problems.  Womenworker wise, I don’t know about the reasons why they valued Indonesian wife as highly as US$50,000, you should be happy as you are being overvalued. Not many Indonesian women are as lucky as you, some – I read somewhere – were sold only for a couple of million rupiahs to Batam island to work as escorts and prostitutes.I also heard somewhere that it is easy to get an ID card (KTP) and as a result it is also not impossible to get an Indonesian pasport. Well, I’m glad if this is not true.

Dec 26, 2004 – Nearly 132,000 Indonesians are killed and more than 37,000 listed as missing after a 9.15 magnitude earthquake off Indonesia and a tsunami triggered by it in the Indian ocean region. The toll in affected Indian Ocean countries reaches 230,000 dead.
Feb 21, 2005 - At least 96 are killed in landslide that sweeps through two West Java villages near a garbage dump.
March 28, 2005 - Nearly 1,000 are believed killed after a quake of magnitude 8.7 hits the coast of Sumatra.
July 20, 2005 - Indonesia confirms first deaths from bird flu. To date the disease has killed 63 people in Indonesia, the world’s highest bird flu death toll.
Sept 1, 2005 - Landslide on island of Sumatra kills 14 and leaves more than a dozen missing.
Sept 5, 2005 - Domestic airliner operated by local carrier Mandala Airlines crashes in residential area of Indonesia’s third biggest city Medan, killing 102 aboard and 47 local residents in an inferno on the ground.
May 15, 2006 - Mount Merapi volcano erupts with clouds of hot gas and rains ash on surrounding areas.
May 27, 2006 - Earthquake rocks area around ancient royal city of Yogyakarta killing at least 5,000 and destroying or damaging 150,000 homes.
July 17, 2006 - A tsunami after a 7.7 magnitude quake in West Java province kills at least 550 people. At least 54,000 people are displaced.
Dec 30, 2006 - A ferry with at least 600 aboard sinks during a stormy night voyage as it traveled between Borneo and Java.
Jan 1, 2007 - An Adam Air passenger plane flying from Surabaya to Manado with 102 people aboard crashes into the sea off the west coast of Sulawesi.
Feb 22, 2007 - At least 42 people are killed when fire breaks out aboard a ferry which was heading from Jakarta to Bangka Island off Sumatra.
March 6, 2007 - Two strong earthquakes kill at least 31 people and injure dozens in the West Sumatra provincial capital of Padang.
March 7, 2007 – Domestic Airliner operated by Garuda Indonesia crashes in Yogyakarta, killing many of its passengers.

comments: No comments for natural disasters. Some accidents were purely accidental, while some others are due to human errors. As long as we still rely on human to run the public transport, error may happen now and then, because to err is human. With an advance control system, accidents can be reduced to a minimum, but never to eliminate them.