Apologia
It’s been a while.
And I wrote this three weeks ago.. couldn’t figure out my logon for the Blog! How embarrassing is that?
The delay is not because I have nothing to say or that old crutch about being worried about getting busted for publicizing stuff that is too sensitive as almost happened last year… (Funny to be purging my anger about issues only to scurry back into the office in the wee hours to erase my blog entry!), and certainly not because of a lack in things to write about.
But with a wee bit of time now available to me in the evenings – making an effort to cut back on those weeks of 15-hour days – I hope to be able to bring a few things forward. That and a distant cousin’s email the other day that reminded me of why I got into journalism to begin with, have got me set down in front of the Mac listening to Ben Harper and Blind Boys from Alabama.
The weekend’s Sunday Times carried a story about how millions have gone missing from various aid agencies involved in Aceh beneath an eye-catching headline that reads: Massive Fraud in Tsunami Rebuilding.
Beyond the BBC I’ve not had any calls about it today but who knows what the next days will bring. The main source of the information seems to be a local NGO that supposedly monitors corruption-related issues here.
Like most journos, I used to steer clear of citing these kinds of groups, all the while pillaging their files for information that passes the Sniff Test, to follow-up on. The ST guy didn’t bother and the consequence is that the story is garbled, hyperbolic and rather than setting the bar nice and high, is so full of holes that anyone with half a brain can punch it full of holes.
Which is too bad. I have been waiting for months for someone to do this story properly because there’s no doubt that graft is increasingly an issue and a solid right to the chin might snap the powers that be back to life.
The city is awash in banners decrying corruption and urging people to Maju bersama, tampa korupsi (Move Forward Without Corruption), the President has in the past 48 hours again vowed to bust down anyone caught siphoning off money, Wolfowitz was in town making similar noises on behalf of the World Bank etc etc and everyone nods and smiles and then plants their faces back in the trough.
The local government flunkies are as slick and oily as ever, and enjoy a position of great authority over the international agencies: you can’t get the job done on your own and they don’t have the money or capacity to do it on their own. So, when you offer to ‘support’ their efforts in the field and they show up with an envelop full of $200.00 hotel bills following a three-day ‘workshop’ in a one-horse town in the sticks where the executive suite costs $20 a night, what are ya gonna do? Very few have the stomach to do what needs to be done: call in the head of the delegation and tell him you’re not his personal ATM, that you have noted his team’s attempt to rip you off and are preparing a report to his superiors, the BRR’s complaints board and the president’s office for good measure in the event there is a repeat.
That approach won’t work in Java but in Aceh people understand the big stick and sometimes you have to wield it.
Everyone is grappling with this one and no one will talk about a united response.
At the same time, we have not seen to sort of institutional corruption one generally associates with Indonesia. More like nibbling about the edges.
And the ST’s ‘expose’ that contractors are corrupt will come as no surprise to anyone who has renovated their bathroom back home in Brighton, Boston or Bombay.
On the plus side, Banda Aceh now boasts its first Italian restaurant, located in the same alleyway where Steakhouse 1 & 2 are found. The fellow who runs all three operations is canny, paying off local and national police to the tune of $2,500.00 a month, paying off the Religious Police and their yoot Taliban shock-troops by contributing to their charities of choice, getting papered up legally though the local administration etc. He’s gotta sell a lot of lager to make it pay but he is obviously making a go of it, fueled by our demands for beer, wine and more beer.
The Spaghetti joint will take off no doubt, especially as more and more foreign families opt to relocate to Aceh when the UN’s security phase drops as is being considered. Current Phase 3 means no family members are allowed, with a compensatory pay hike to the tune of about $2,500.00 per UN employee/month. With close to 300 people working under that security umbrella that’s a $9 million cost savings over the course of a year.
In the interests of full disclosure, I get that salary top-up so I am not exactly a disinterested party.
I am all for lowering the security phase if it makes sense but in this case I – and many others who are not necessarily looking at the bottom-line – think it is poorly timed.
Provincial elections will be held in August (Insh’allah) so why would you not wait until October/November before lowering the phase? Right now we have no idea what the sort of Law on the Governance of Aceh (LOGA) the House in Jakarta is going to approve, and how that package is likely to be received by many thousands of non-combatants.
Phase adjustment will result in an influx of new foreign faces all of whom will have to go through a period of readjustment to local norms at a time when grassroots fires will be burning in the lead-up to Election Day. We know that some politicians are going to try and make hay bleating about morally corrupt internationals so why add potential fuel to the fundamentalist fires at such a sensitive time?
Some will argue that the Phase could simply be raised in the event of trouble forgetting the huge internal administrative costs associated with this exercise and the potential costs to individuals who opt to bring their families in to join them will wipe out whatever marginal cost savings their might have been.
No. I say wait till we see the outcome of these elections and make a decision based on the situation on the ground rather than the fiscal expediencies laid out by UN bean counters.