suharto, 1921-2008

Suharto finally died, at the age of 86, on Sunday in Jakarta. Employing a personal brand of corruption and brutality, mysticism and capitalism, he held a near iron grip on power in Indonesia for more than 30 years and naturally, even in death, remains a divisive figure.

However, what interests me most is not the conventional ‘dictator in winter’ catalogue of extravagances and abuses. Indeed, he used his power to transform his family into the wealthiest in Indonesia (the state paid them to, among other things, have a monopoly on the toll roads and build the Indonesian equivalent of Epcot Center), an incidental backlight to the soap opera leading up to this death as his family and former military/political associates sought to leverage the attorney general to drop his $1.4 billion embezzlement suit (the criminal suit was thrown out a few years ago on the grounds he was mentally unfit). Moreover, for both victims and families, the blood on his hands is indisputable, as he was responsible for the ‘anti-communist’ purge of the late 1960s when the military used religious and anti-Chinese instigations to spur villagers into a campaign of mass murder that left more than 3 million dead (as an aside, the NY Times figure of 500,000 deaths is accepted by largely no one; Suharto’s own generals bragged that it was at least 3 million). In addition, Suharto held hundreds of thousands of political prisoners for decades without trial, and permitted his military to commit wholesale atrocities in East Timor and Aceh. He also fostered, as a bulwark for his political control, the rampant corruption that even today plagues average Indonesians by stunting foreign investment and devouring economic gains.

And yet, despite tragedy without seeming limit, what interests me most about Suharto is the almost mystic caché that the ‘smiling general’ still has for Indonesians. In fact, in my opinion, the chief debate among most Indonesians contends not if Suharto was a bad person or if he engineered all the killing that went on in the paddies of Java under the pretense of smoking out the communists (when Suharto came to power Indonesia had the largest communist party outside the Soviet Union), but whether Suharto should be forgiven. Considering that the closest this man ever came to an apology was ‘I am sorry for my mistakes,’ upon stepping down in 1998 as the economy unraveled and the cities burned, it says much more about how Indonesia as a culture relates to authority than the transgressions of that authority against the culture.

Suharto was the quintessential Indonesian leader in that he was stepped in a cultural Javanism that prioritizes deference to authority over virtually everything else, including right and wrong.

To me, Javanism, as the embracing and practice of the culture and beliefs of Java, represents a search for harmony, both individually and with the world. It is heavily informed by the heavy social stratification (and relationships of deference) that has long existed in Indonesia. In constant communion with the absolute powers of the spiritual world (heavy shades of Hinduism), but with a distinctly Indonesian/islander ‘take it easy’ (tidak apa-apa) approach, personal autonomy almost ceases to exist. The maxim that I think best sums it up is, "God is within you. God is everywhere. But do not think you are God." In reality this often manifests itself in an uncritical deference to all concerns spirutal, authoritative, and powerful, from children and parents to constituents and leaders.

Suharto styled himself as a Javanese king, complete with mystics, pilgrimages to power spots, and spiritual charms (including midgets and albino water buffalo). In a country where one can ascend to power based upon the irresistible force of the ‘flaming womb’ or wahyu (which Suharto’s wife, a member of the sultanate of Solo, possessed), power is an occult equation. Present day Indonesia is a product of the patronage systems that predated it, from the great kingdoms of Java where the king ruled, over a stratified rice-driven society, through the mandate of the spirit world until his verve fled him for another, to 250 years of Dutch colonialism, where the economic system colonial officials encountered so closely resembled middle age feudalism that the Dutch East Indies company simply bought off the courtiers and told them to handle everything else. Part of the reason that Indonesia is so corrupt today is that Suharto, through both moment and resources, was able to fuse this old style patronage with a modern, commodity driven, economic system.

As I have most likely said before, and hopefully is somewhat clear from all this, the fundamental Enlightenment ideas of the individual have yet to truly reach Indonesia. This is why, for me, if the passing of Suharto says anything about Indonesia’s future it will be if a piece of old style Javanism (in the public sense) dies with the old man. Will Indonesia finally have a new breed of leader? When Suharto stepped down there were numerous eye witness reports that claimed to see his wahyu fly across the sky to the South, the cardinal direction of soon to be President Megawati.

It is unreasonable to expect any sort of great public or legal accounting for the Suharto legacy because, unfortunately but quite practically, the 1998 purge of Indonesia’s political system was a mere decapitation, leaving behind all of the politicos, generals, and bureaucrats who owe their careers to the general. The wounds inflicted by violence, repression, and intellectual castration may fade but will never disappear. Instead, it remains to be seen whether his death will finally shatter the spell and release Indonesians from their centuries old rapture.

* * *

On Sunday, shortly after his death, heavy rains and winds engulfed the hillside outside Solo where Suharto was laid to rest, beside his wife, on Monday and a localized earthquake occurred outside Yogyakarta, very near the place of his birth.

metrominis

In recently declaring for myself a new favorite means of transportation, I realized that I never really gave credit (where it is indeed due) to the previously reigning champion, the city bus.

Most foreigners keep their distance from the public buses, and when I lived in Yogya and was therefore mostly qualified to offer ‘advice’ to the people passing through my losmen I would frequently recommend some place with the rider: ‘Getting there is really easy, you just grab the number two bus…’ At this point I was usually interrupted, as they explained that they were pretty sure they did not want anything to do with the public bus system.

And, indeed, part of me can duly commiserate: taking the bus in Indonesia is loud, egalitarian, and seemingly never quite in control.

The buses that ply the streets in most of the larger cities (for instance, Yogyakarta and Jakarta has buses, whereas Ketapang or Malang do not) all seem to be, on average, about 15-20 years old. However, between aggressive driving (more on this later), a constant barrage from the elements, and terrible road conditions, it is pretty tough to put an age on these buses.

Ultimately, based on the amount of acrid, particulated smoke that pours out of their tailpipes (or the time that I singed my toes on the overheated floor of the bus), I think this seems a reasonable estimate, yet no matter.

The buses have two doors on the bus’s sidewalk side, one in the front and one in the extreme back. Both of the doors have either been removed or permanently tied back, perhaps because they would only get in the way or perhaps because they would be undoubtedly disassembled the first night in the yard. In many cases it seems as if third gear and above have been retired, perhaps out of a general necessity. Most buses, however, still sport the original fringed curtains.

Each bus is a two man team, a driver and what I like to think of as the jump man. The driver, as you might imagine, drives, basically as fast and aggressively (this applies to passing other buses that run the same route) as possible. The jump man, spends most of his time hanging out the back door shouting at people on the street and communicating with the driver (by bashing a coin or washer onto something metal), but his duties also extend to collecting fares (2,000 rupiah flat rate), getting off at most major intersections to go looking for old ladies, late comers, or the weak willed and hustle them onto the bus, and (my personal favorite) be responsible for throwing the 2x4 that comes with each bus under the rear wheel whenever the bus stops on any sort of slope (it seems that most of the buses in the fleet lack operational brakes). Anyhow, many of these duties leave him outside the bus when it starts up again (which is actually misleading since the bus rarely ever ceases motion: I have seen senior citizens, while disembarking, have to vault out and hit the ground running) forcing him to have to chase the bus before lunging back up to his post. It is the best thing about taking the bus; if things ever get boring you can just watch the jump man until its your turn to have to stick your landing.

not a creature was stirring,

As you may or may not know, pork is unclean for Muslims and categorically forbidden not only to eat, but even to be around. You cannot get pork in the marketplace not because no one will buy it (there are a surprising number of Christians around), but because it cannot even be around anyone else’s food. When you live in a country that is 90% Muslim, you end up having to go without such deliciousness.

The holidays having just passed; I can happily report that to well behaved boys and girls in such a predicament Santa Claus brings sausages, sweet delicious sausages. Truly, what awaited me on Christmas morning was a stocking (disguised as a shopping bag) filled with sausages—salami, sopressata, et al. After all if there is something that the big guy can get behind it is checking those pesky, killjoy Muslims. And nitrates.

However, just because I had the polar seal of approval, does not mean that I was not sweating my return to Indonesia. Customs, especially in Jakarta, have been known to be pretty whimsical with their ‘mission,’ often with foreigners like myself. From the people who so haphazardly enforce religious mores—confiscating the ‘Lolita’ DVD while suitcases packed with liquor bottles sail through—you should expect anything. They would have had to break out the gloves to confiscate my sausages, but the border is not really the place to win too many arguments.
With a suitcase full of pork products and foreign literature (also a no-no at times), I strolled up to the border, sweating things a bit. What I did not realize was that New Year’s Eve is so festive for Indonesian customs officers. Trying to put my bag into their x-ray machine, this jovial band of mustachioed men, all sporting the traditional developing country navy blue sweater outfit, was simply not having it.

Their chief duties seemed to largely involve slapping everyone on the back while saying ‘Bagus! Bagus!’ (Goulet-ian even in translation: ‘Good! Good!’), apparently with friends like these petty worries like security are secondary. As my bag threatened to disappear into the bowels of the x-ray machine one of the officers literally reached into the machine (you would think if you worked with x-rays, like, professionally, you would be a bit more cognizant of their properties) to pull my bag back out and jauntily carry it around the machine for me. Not a single bag was being scanned.

I can only imagine what was really going on at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport that night, but clearly these guys did not want anything to do with it. In a country as corrupt as Indonesia (they recently improved to number 2 in Transparency International’s yearly report), people usually shrug off corruption with a sort of ‘hey! Last I checked we were all human beings, right? Can anyone really help it?’ guffaw. That all these men were smiling, back-slapping, and giggling nervously is never a good sign. My sausages and I did not stick around to ask too many questions. Maybe that is just what was going on because, after all, everyone deserves the chance to start off better, even just nominally, in the New Year.

yes, but is it authentic?

Part of what makes Singapore so strange is that everything seems to be about, on average, ten years old. In that this applies to the only exceptions to this rule, the oft-touted ‘ethnic enclaves,’ you get the impression that such neighborhoods exist largely for you, the tourist, to visit.

Everything in Singapore bears the fingerprints of centralization, from public transportation to the litany of prohibited behaviors. Singapore functions as a highly paternal society where the state is responsible for the decisions (and the molding of behaviors) on everything from urban planning to urinal flushing. Truly, there is nothing like some good old fashioned Asian totalitarianism to keep the machines of society purring. In terms of the ‘Little India’ and the like, when you consider the large tracts of all previous existing neighborhoods that were undoubtedly bulldozed to clear space for skyscraper after skyscraper (or mall after mall), it feels as if the mere existence of these narrow quarters of color—building of colonial vintage, cramped streets, hawking food vendors—are all part of the plan.

Therein, a trip to ‘Chinatown’ felt more like a trip to the Epcot iteration, complete with a large permanent dome tent over the entire food street (one notable thing that we missed out on was the so-advertised ‘last sausage shop before the equator!’—as apparently a German has also set up shop). Shop after shop sold the highly authentic Chinese goods of faux silk tissue box koozies, bottles with your name and an oriental theme painted on the inside, and the plastic golden cat with the perpetually waving arm that graces many Chinese restaurants.

By far the most telling moment of the foray was our arrival, by cab, at a Hindu temple on the edge of this neighborhood. It was a Sunday and a busy day at the temple and anyhow there always seems to be a bit of a scrum in front of temples due to the requirement of removing one’s shoes. In addition to members of the congregation coming and going, a group of white people on the sidewalk attempted to navigate the mechanical mysteries of the coin operated shoe lockers (because, after all, the temple shoe thieves are particularly hardened at picking out the tourist’s shoes: no doubt they just look for the biggest ones). To be fair, the overly painted Australian wives raking through their purses were dealing with a foreign exchange transaction, but I had ceased to pay attention as the taxi cab driver, an unfortunately loquacious (this is a common trend for cabbies in Singapore, at one point we had a driver who upon telling us we were driving on a street where the F1 race was held, began slamming the wheel while screaming 'this F2! this F2!') man of Malaysian extraction had leaned to me (in the passenger seat) to helpfully point out, ‘Yes! Temple. See? All your friends are here.’

stroll.

A few of our days were spent on Sentosa Island, the island to the south of the city. Sentosa has the dual (but undoubtedly linked) status as both where Singapore goes on weekends to unwind at the beach as well as the epicenter of ‘Asia’s grooviest [New Year’s Eve] party.’

Indeed, Sentosa has all the amenities you might want in a magical beach resort, from a bi-nightly musical water spout/laser light performance (dubbed ‘Song of the Sea’), to a friendly sea creature mascot of such indeterminate lineage that he could only have been produced by the murky waters in which children splashed enthusedly and sari-clad Indian women sat soggily, to an alpine slide (on a killer 250 feet of vertical, complete with a chairlift), to ‘Underwater World,’ to a monorail, to the Port of Singapore.

Whaat? Wait. Whaat?

As there is little room in Singapore, Sentosa has a front row seat of the musical 'Singapore: Commerce.' In fact, as Singapore handles one quarter of all the world's shipping containers and an amazing half of the world's supply of crude oil, there is more than enough to see on Sentosa, all of it happening right off the beach! This contributes to a sort of strange scene, something on the scale of a cross between beach Disney and oil refinery Disney, where the equatorial sun would not so much set as fade into a sort of particulated impressionist's haze, to be replaced by the soft, all night glow of burning refinery flares.

One of my favorite things on Sentosa (besides a downright terrifying population of local peacocks that formed a sort of death from above brigade to deal with inquisitive children) was the 'Cool Stop' and its preservation of the traditions of shitty beach food. The 'Cool Stop' was your average, grimy, fluorescent-lit, stand-alone beach kiosk where you have to specify that no, in fact, you do not need the swimming pool of coke in the semi-pliable, yours to keep cup, with your popcorn and sweaty looking hotdog. Notable menu items included classic beach fare such as mashed potatoes--advertised as being high in vitamin C--and prawn crackers (undoubtedly for putting the beach in your snacking). The most homey touch of the 'Stop' was a Microsoft WordArt generated sign on the cash register instructing: 'Please pay here for tattoo service.' I do not know what is more unsettling: that people were entrusting the 'Cool Stop' with having clean needles or that, given the clear lack of room in the shack, someone was roaming the sands of petroleum refinery Disney doling out the inevitable big cat.

at the embassy

While in Singapore I had the pleasure of making a trip to the Indonesian embassy to apply for a new visa. The visit was filled with many snags and unexpected surprises (at one point I had to run for a cab to go buy a plane ticket and then return with confirmation in less than 25 minutes) as well as opportunities to use my Indonesian (I had to talk the lady working in the canteen beneath the embassy to let me use her phone), that it was difficult to feel like I had ever left.

However, the most quintessentially Indonesian element of it all was the embassy’s LCD marquee. Already prominently mounted and plugged in, poised to supply useful information to all of the embassy’s visitors, someone had neglected to program the display. So, instead of important consular information, the marquee looped the pre-set message: ‘This is an LCD display. It can…’ At this point it went on to cycle through all of the machine’s features, which included: left, right, run, flash, scroll, doff, push up, push down, etc, etc.

It is really just too fitting and, most importantly, reassuring to know that even when posted abroad, Indonesia carries on.

singapore

I had the good fortune to spend a week in Singapore for the holidays, so I apologize for neglecting my lady here. Going into the trip I knew that Singapore would mean a number of things:

1. Less rice – as you already know Indonesians eat it three meals a day.
2. Hot water – missing since I left the states.
3. No early morning muezzin wake-up calls.
4. People who speak English – much less true than I expected.
5. Pork!
6. Alcohol!
7. Yet another take on the electrical outlet.
8. Higher prices.
9. More Asian.
10. No durians!
11. Taller buildings.
12. Closed-circuit camera monitoring – its everywhere.

Singapore, somewhat predictably, is a bizarre place. Both small and affluent, the benevolent fathers of Singapore have decided to give their people malls and plenty of them. With high standards of living and not much space, the places to spend that money seem limited. Instead of buying cars, second homes and with their purchasing power further bolstered by subsidized health care (and government nudged healthy behavior) and subsidized housing the citizens of Singapore seem to almost despair of ways to spend their money. The result is miles and miles of malls where you can buy luxuries of all kinds (watches, purses, perfumes, etc), mountains of impractical looking shoes, and plastic cell phone charms for any occasion. When going anywhere on foot you do not walk on the sidewalk, you take the mall; at times it feels like living in some sort of giant commercial hamster aquarium, except everyone has edgy cropped hair and wears t-shirts with messages in sassy if not imperfect English.

passing through

Of the sundry modes of transport I have used in Indonesia—car, bicycle, becak (rickshaw), ferry, propeller plane, perahu (traditional sailing vessel), coach bus, mikrolet (a minivan with the seats removed that runs on set routes but will only depart when every last cubit of space is occupied by some form of passenger) city bus, double-outrigger longboats, the illustrious Vespa, ojek (a young man who sits under a tree and intermittently sells price negotiable point-to-point rides on his motorbike), commercial jet, and train—I have a new favorite.

A novel means of leaving Kalimantan - referred to by Indonesians simply as ‘speed’ - now tops the list.

There are no dependable roads through the swamps between Pontianak, the province's capital (and most important city in Western Kalimantan) and Southwestern Kalimantan, the only means between the two are airplane or speedboat.

Borneo (the massive island of which the Indonesian portion is called Kalimantan) is dominated by its rivers. These long, dark sinews wind banshee paths up into the the jungle, coils of commerce and Conrad. Indeed, visiting Pontianak is a visit to one of the most affluent, orderly, and clean cities in Indonesia, replete with the river’s spoils: broad boulevards, leafy estates, beautiful exposition centers, and a palatial governor’s residence.

The 6am boat leaves Melano (a place that seriously resembles the end of the world, both geographically as well as millennially), a dingy northern outpost about four hours on the other side of the marshes from Pontianak, from a claptrap of oily boards at the terminus of a 250 meter long cement gulch of two story (mostly vacant) market tenements. Stalls on the first floor sell Ramen noodles and glasses (too hot to touch) of sweet, sludgy coffee to crouching men who wrap plaid sarongs around their shoulders as a means of steeling their hollow chests against the morning mist. Hands are nowhere to be seen; clove cigarettes dangle on their lips. Unlike everything else, the river is moving—meandering in crudely colored eddies past the wharf—but just across the river a decaying sawmill slouches into a mirror.

The boat itself is long and has eight wrought iron benches, wide enough to sit three across on top of deceptively thin brown cloth cushions. Most of the seats are under a hard topped canopy to which long torsoed folk need not apply (especially once the boat actually moves from its bed of glass). A piece of cord, under the disinterested hand of a teenage boy, winds a path across this canopy through luggage loops and suitcase handles as the twin Yamaha 200 horsepower engines murmur to life.

The island’s latticework of rivers makes it possible to accomplish a trip up the coast without touching the ocean, and the speeding boat breaks belatedly at anonymous confluences and spirits schizophrenically through indiscernible mangroves. The captain is a young man who seems stunned to be making more money than anyone else he knows; he sports a red adidas hoodie and prolifically smokes dark cigarettes, individually wrapped in metallic gold paper and the boat shimmies to the right each time he ferrets for the string that releases each cigarette from its wrapper.

After an hour the boat idles next to a puttering barge from which a few unkempt looking men jump down, grab seats and spend the remainder of the journey occupied by video games on their mobile phones. Later, the boat stops at a village built entirely over the river, where you can pay 1000 rupiah to use the bathroom or just wander through an eerie platformed garden of satellite dishes pointing straight up, as if to collect the rain. Indeed, this place waits in the shadow of the equator; the sun is already high. Most of the place is built with the castoffs—flawed boards and cellophane. Men nose their speed boats into the greasy dock and jump off, leaving them idling their way dowm. Strolling back from buying cigarettes, if the engine has not died, they will nonchalantly step off the opposite end of the wharf, and perfunctorily putter off.

The young man in the red sweatshirt silently motions everyone back to the boat, a newly acquired lumpy backpack slung over his shoulder. With the exception of this foray, the trip cuts a swath through a disturbed wilderness where scars dot primitive forests; the captain attempts enough blind 180 degree turns at full speed to convince you that either you are very alone or you just do not value life in the same way. On you race, up canals and past barges, by logging camps and across river mouths. Near the end of the trip children dot the bank to wave and even their haggard mothers look up from the wash with a faint smile. Suddenly, almost out of nowhere, the engine is cut; there is a dock. Your ass throbs and people want to carry your bags. You have passed through. You are there.