Tag: Indonesia

The Story: The Red Cross is warning of an onrushing pandemic emergency in southeast Asia's largest country, Indonesia, as the need for ventilators becomes so...

The bombings of three churches in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday highlighted the vulnerability of Christians in Asia, where religious minorities of many faiths have been battered by this surge of nationalism and sectarian politics. The explosions in Sri Lanka, which killed more than 200, “brought mourning and sorrow” on the most important of Christian holidays, Pope Francis said after celebrating Mass in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. Christians make up only 6 percent of the population of Sri Lanka, which is still emerging from the shadow of a harrowing civil war between the Sinhalese Buddhist majority and ethnic Tamils, most of whom are Hindu or Christian. But Christians were a primary target, and their faith has been increasingly under attack by militants and politicians across South and Southeast Asia. In Myanmar, Christian minorities fear they will be the next targets of the Buddhist-dominated government. And in Sri Lanka, a toxic Buddhist nationalist political force has agitated against minority Christians and Muslims, dismissing them as relics of a British colonial era when the Buddhist majority itself was repressed. “Muslims and Christians, especially evangelical Christians, have been facing persecution for many years in Sri Lanka, but the scale and nature of today’s attacks are not comparable,” said Ruki Fernando, a Roman Catholic human rights activist in Colombo. Three years ago on Easter, a suicide bomber targeted Christian faithful in a park in the Pakistani city of Lahore, killing more than 70 people. Even in Muslim-majority Indonesia, which held peaceful elections last Wednesday, faith-based politics have tilted the political landscape, as the persecution of religious minorities mounts with little pushback from moderate politicians. Hundreds of churches have been forced to close in Indonesia, where about 10 percent of the population is Christian.

More than 190 million Indonesian voters are heading to the polls for an election that will test the country's democracy. Read more: Indonesia election puts Islam on the ballot The all-important presidential vote is a remake of the 2014 contest, with incumbent Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, once again going up against former general Prabowo Subianto. Jokowi won the 2014 election with 53% of the votes, and ran his campaign by promoting Indonesia's social plurality, while promising to boost the economy and improve infrastructure. This time around, Subianto hopes to edge off Jokowi by running on a platform of law and order, combined with conservative Islamic values. Jokowi hopes Amin can help bring in more conservative, traditional, and rural voters. "Religious regulations are used as political tools, especially in local areas, to strengthen support among an incumbent leader's constituency prior to an election," Ray Rangkuti, from the Indonesian politics watchdog Lingkar Madani, told DW. However, the parliament is decisive in creating the field for presidential elections. Sixteen parties are competing in the 2019 parliamentary elections, but Indonesian voters are also somewhat forced into voting for establishment parties. And once in parliament, parities who want to put a candidate on the ballot must have at least 20% support in the current parliament, or alternatively have won at least 25% of the vote in the latest election. Jokowi's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) won 19% of the vote in 2014, the largest party in parliament, but still under the threshold to field a candidate without a coalition.

In 2013 the Constitutional Court ruled that beginning in 2019 the legislative and presidential elections were to be held simultaneously on the same day to reduce “horse trading” or transactional alliances made among parties following the legislative elections. Time will tell if the simultaneous elections fulfill their purpose of reducing transactional politics. However, some legislative candidates aren’t waiting for the election outcome, with candidates in areas hostile to their party’s presidential candidate going against their party’s alliance and openly supporting the opposing candidate. It is vitally important to understand what other potential effects holding the elections simultaneously has on the campaign and Indonesian politics more broadly. Open list voting has led to more personalized and less party policy-based political campaigning, as candidates from not only opposing parties but also from within the same party compete for votes. So, what are some of the unintended effects of the simultaneous elections? One of the expected effects is that the two presidential parties will make gains in the legislative elections, riding the “coat-tail” effect of the popularity and attention the presidential candidates garner. People don’t know what parties think about different issues.” Puteri Komarudin, a Golkar candidate running for the House in West Java VII, said she is often contacted by the media for comment on the presidential election despite not being officially in the presidential campaign team, and that “only a few media ask questions about the legislative campaign, the rest are very presidential election centric.” This lack of media attention is mirrored in the voting public. Buky Wibawa, regional council candidate and senior figure of Gerindra’s West Java provincial chapter, said these elections may not only be the world’s largest, but also “the most complicated election in the world.” Stephani Dania, running for the council in Bandung on the National Democratic (NasDem) ticket, said campaigning was not just a matter of gaining support from voters, but that a large portion of her time was spent educating voters on the voting process for the different levels of government. This money saved would be well spent on a significant education campaign to inform voters on how the different levels of government work and how to fully participate in the biggest election day the world has ever witnessed.

Don’t you get tired of the political chaos around the world and in Indonesia, now with the never-ending election cacophony? Ugh! So when I got an email reminder from Museum Macan that it was the last weekend for its contemporary art exhibition on March 9 and 10, I jumped at the chance. There’s nothing like art to reduce stress, stimulate one’s brain and revive flagging spirits! There were exhibitions by Arahmaiani, one of Indonesia’s most respected, multitalented artists; Lee Mingwei, a renowned Taiwanese artist living in Paris and the United States, and On Kamara a Japanese conceptual artist whose “One Million Years” is about the passage of time, on “society’s use of dates to give materiality to the elusiveness of time”. “To give materiality to the elusiveness of time”? Wow! Don’t you just love that? &ldquo... Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.

Don’t you get tired of the political chaos around the world and in Indonesia, now with the never-ending election cacophony? Ugh! So when I got an email reminder from Museum Macan that it was the last weekend for its contemporary art exhibition on March 9 and 10, I jumped at the chance. There’s nothing like art to reduce stress, stimulate one’s brain and revive flagging spirits! There were exhibitions by Arahmaiani, one of Indonesia’s most respected, multitalented artists; Lee Mingwei, a renowned Taiwanese artist living in Paris and the United States, and On Kamara a Japanese conceptual artist whose “One Million Years” is about the passage of time, on “society’s use of dates to give materiality to the elusiveness of time”. “To give materiality to the elusiveness of time”? Wow! Don’t you just love that? &ldquo... Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.

Growing fears of another eruption after the first triggered a deadly tsunami that claimed the lives of over 400 people; Greg Palkot has the latest. #AmericasNewsroom #FoxNews FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering…

In the tumultuous months after protests and riots wracked Jakarta, bringing down Indonesian president Haji Muhammad Suharto in May 1998, a British political consultancy arrived on the scene. SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica (CA), says it came to southeast Asia’s most populous nation at the behest of “pro-democratic groups” to “assist with a national campaign of political reform and democratization.” The country was still reeling from the Asian economic crisis that started in 1997 and the exit of a leader who had held on to power for three decades. In Thailand, the company claims to have spent nine months surveying voters before staging an intervention on behalf of multiple political parties. In total, SCL claims to have worked on more than 100 election campaigns across 32 countries. The documents don’t specify who SCL initially worked for in Indonesia, but they indicate that the company managed the election campaign of Wahid’s National Awakening Party. Before Thaksin’s coming In Thailand, too, SCL claims to have set up a large operation that went on for months. “It was quite commonplace for voters to sell their votes twice—and then not vote at all!” As in Indonesia, SCL set up a research project to collate data from all 79 constituencies, using a staff of more than 1,200 that worked over nine months. In 50% of the constituencies assessed, the research found, vote-buying did not impact the electoral result, a finding that SCL claims was worth $250 million alone. SCL made clear those conflicts that could be won, those that could not, and those that had to be hard fought for,” said Leekpai, according to the documents. “Thai political parties want to win elections and some of them brought in whatever expertise they could to advise them.” However, there is some skepticism about the possibility of multiple parties supporting a project to stop vote-buying, as the SCL documents suggest.

Nearly 300 academics and activists gathered over a weekend recently at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague for an extraordinary, highly animated conversation about ‘authoritarian populism and the rural world’. What, then, does the rise of such different forms of authoritarian populism mean for rural peoples around the world? Many themes emerged. Authoritarian populisms The term ‘authoritarian populism’ we used to frame the conference was intensely debated. The need for a new narrative to counter authoritarian populism, one that is popular, inclusive and progressive was a common call across the event. Religion and moral solidarities Religion was a common theme; one not often discussed in gatherings on agrarian issues. With such repressive closing down, how can emancipatory alternatives emerge? There was much talk too of the importance of cross-class mobilisation and the importance of intersectional analysis and organising. But the challenges of generating and sustaining alternatives are very real. Our focus is on the rural origins and consequences of authoritarian populism, as well as the forms of resistance and variety of alternatives that are emerging.

By Ed Davies and Agustinus Beo Da Costa in Jakarta The youngest son of former Indonesian president Suharto, Hutomo “Tommy” Mandala Putra, is making a new push to launch a career in politics at the helm of a party that believes it can cash in on his late father’s legacy. Suharto, who ruled Indonesia with an iron fist for 32 years, was brought down by protests in 1998, amid accusations of vast corruption and nepotism benefiting his family and cronies. Nonetheless, family members have made repeated attempts to get into politics, often seeking to tap into nostalgia about the unity and security under Suharto’s government, which was backed by a military that crushed any sign of revolt. READ MORE: Open letter to PM Ardern – raise Papua human rights issue with Jokowi “The vision and mission of this party is to prepare an alternative option for the 2019 elections,” Badaruddin Andi Picunang, acting sectary-general of the Berkarya Party, said in an interview at its Jakarta headquarters. Yearning for stability Many people still yearned for the stability and the robust economic growth and development, at least in the earlier decades, of the Suharto era, said Picunang. “But now we see killings everywhere, pickpockets and religious leaders attacked,” he said. Hutomo echoed this theme in a news conference after being elected chairman of Berkarya, which means “working” in Indonesian, at a party meeting earlier this month in the city of Solo. “It is impossible for us to return to the New Order, it has become part of the history,” said Hutomo, who is widely known as Tommy, referring to his father’s government. “But what we want to develop and continue are the good things that were carried out by the New Order,” he said, highlighting Suharto’s rolling five-year development plans. Many of the members of Berkarya are former members of Golkar, his father’s old political machine and still the second-biggest party in Parliament.