When the going gets weird...

My favorite bits and pieces from the last couple of days

Snakes and Adders
The clearing of the 50+ hectare Rasuna Epicentrum lands smack in the centre of Jakarta and opposite the Grinch’s temporary lair claimed the life of a seven-meter-long reticulated python, crushed by a back-hoe on Saturday morning: as if I needed another reason to hate Aburizal Bakrie and his band of reptiles.

Save Me From Myself
A judge in Sulawesi fired because he was caught in a polygamist relationship (formally prohibited behavior for civil servants but tolerated, nudge-nudge, wink-wink claims he only married the other three women to prevent himself from committing adultery (ed: presumably with them...).

Top Cop Cock Block
Indonesian National Police and armed forces announced last week they will no longer accept Papuan recruits who have tried to increase to the size of their tackle through bindings and the use of mildly poisonous plants to encourage swelling on account of it affecting their readiness to fight.

Idiocy in Paradise
Much harrumphing in Bali after the release on youtube of teasers for a film that focuses on the Kuta Cowboy phenomena of young Indonesian surfer types servicing older foreign female tourists. Bali’s bandar “traditionalists” (ed: goons in checker-board sarongs and silly hats) are publicly outraged to discover that a small group of beach boys are providing the same types of services as the thousands of juvenile female sex workers trolling their wares on the Island of the Gods.
Gov Made Pastika – the much admired former police general – applauded the beach raids conducted this week which saw two dozen ‘muscular, tanned men’ detained and questioned.

The Company You Keep
The Justice and Human Rights Minister toured the country’s new bespoke prison wing for corruption suspects on Tuesday accompanied by….one of the country’s most loathed corruption suspects.

Roaring Mice
Gayus, a nobody in the tax office who has emerged at the centre of a poisonous new scandal after it was revealed he amassed over $3 million in kickbacks in a few short years is singing to investigators, implicating his former bosses, local prosecutors and senior officials at the AG’s offices, several judges and national-level police generals in a broader “judicial mafia” conspiracy that is too Byzantine to explain in brief. No one disputes that Gayus is a very small fish in the grand scheme of things, but what’ll be interesting to see is how he is remade into a national hero.

Ango-Indo Conspiracy Poisoned Local Kids: And a Nation Yawns….
The UK arm of an American company, Innospec Ltd, that manufactures fuel additives was fined $12.5 millions in a London court for bribing Indonesian officials $8.7 million to delay implementation of the government’s order to convert from leaded- to non-leaded gasoline for several years. Does anyone believe the American and British business communities in Jakarta were unaware that this was going on? Where’s the embassy demos, the outrage?

What’s His Name’s Disease, Contagious
Hard on the heels of news that a central figure in the $2.6 million Bank Indonesia vote-buying scandal is unable to comply with multiple subpoenas to appear before the KPK because she is undergoing therapy for ‘memory loss’ in Singapore, a crooked Bupati from Kalimantan has suddenly developed similar symptoms…. and was immediately released from prison.

Taliban-Lite Tangled Up in Blues
The forgetful corrupter (previous item) in Singapore, Nunun, is married to former deputy national police chief Adang Daradjatun who is a Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) legislator. It is hard to believe that such a conservative and pious (uhhh.. ya) man would be unaware that his wife is running around handing out millions of dollars in travelers cheques to crooked politicians so I for one am looking forward to his detention.
Better news came early this week with the detention of PKS legislator Mukhamad Misbakhun accused of forging a letter of credit to secure a $21.4 million bank loan that he subsequently defaulted on. The juice is in the fact that he borrowed from the collapsed Bank Century and was one of the prime movers behind the House’s investigation into the bank’s failure, a thinly disguised smear job directed at the current finance minister, Sri Mulyani.

Papa’s Rollin’ Stone Gathers No Political Joss

One of the weirder recent newsy bits that slipped beneath the radar was the midnight relocation last week of the gravestone of Indonesia’s first president Soekarno and what it says about the declining political fortunes of his puddin’ daughter.
Jakarta Post gave it a couple of inches. I’ve not found any other references in the Indonesian media or blogosphere tho I’m sure there’s more out there.
Story goes that the two-ton slab of rock – which looks like a meteor but I can’t confirm - marking his grave in Blitar, East Java, was pushed one meter to the north by a posse armed with permits, shovels and four 5-ton jacks. Word is the move was executed at daughter Megawati (Mega) Sukarnoputri’s orders, supervised by her son and witnessed by a member of her political party PDI-P (Indonesia Democratic Party of Struggle).
Before I suggest the likely motive behind the rolling stone, one admission: I reckon there’s a special place in hell reserved for people like Mega. The fact she has never bothered to reach out to the families of the party activists murdered by security forces in front of her Jakarta office in 1996 – “I never asked them to support me…” – tells you everything you need to know about her character. I also watched her physically jerk away from terrified Madurese during her six-minute visit to the camps where they were living during the worst of the Kalimantan/Sampit headhunter riots. Only weeks of retail therapy in Singapore allowed her to recover from the trauma of a poor, ‘unclean’ person having the gall to actually make contact with her. She’s a sham, a parody of the courageous woman who stood up to Suharto in the 90s.
There is little doubt that Mega’s orders regarding Daddy’s tombstone were inspired by her regular consultations with her spiritual advisors and astrologers who likely suggested the slab’s positioning as lacking the necessary JavaVoodoo-meets-Feng Sui to cement her political fortunes. As for why it was done at this specific moment in time, I’ll posit the following.
PDI-P are in crisis as they enter their three-day national congress in Bali this week. What was once the populist choice of the people, whose tides of supporters turned the streets of the country’s major cities the party’s red-and-black back in the day, is a national disgrace. Under Mega’s stewardship – including a desultory three-year as president – PDI-P has imploded. Gone are any vestiges of the neo-people’s power vibe it carried through Suharto’s decline and disgrace, pimped off by the party brass to a new old guard of powerful businessmen lead by her husband, Taufik Kemas.
Despite Mega Inc.’s efforts to cement the family fortunes by pushing forth her daughter as the logical next leader, this is a ‘dynasty’ in collapse.
Observers expect Mega to be re-elected party chairman but it is clear to all but the most brainwashed of supporters that her aura is greatly diminished. PDI-P has been pummeled in the past two national elections, watching its share of the popular vote plunge from 34% in 1999, to 20% in 2004 and 14% in 2009. Mega was soundly beaten (60/40) in the run-off presidential elections in 2004. Her personal popularity was further tested last year when incumbent President Waffle took almost two-thirds of the ballots cast to Mega’s 28%, obviating the need for the presidential run-off.
At the provincial level, PDI-P saw its locked-up East Java gubernatorial race (pop 40 million) stolen through a combination of ballot-stuffing and graft and their power greatly diminished in other regional and local elections.
Various members of the clan – don’t even get me started on the bed-hopping in this family - have defected to other parties, and/or challenge her for the leadership of a party she claims as a birthright. More importantly, dozens of current and former national legislators have found themselves caught up in recent scandals, ranging from the auctioning off of the deputy governorship of the national bank to the collapse of Bank Century.
The party will not toss off Mega this week and tack back towards a serious challenge to the Democrats and a successor to President Waffle (TBA at a later date). With the dynasty as stake, she’ll need all the mojo she can muster to position the 3rd generation of the family as the ‘natural’ choice for the future of PDI-P, and thus the reason for last weeks’ dead-of-night kejawen moment in rural East Java.