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March 18, 2018

Clowns demand more of Indonesia’s political circus

Indonesia always does well in the Department of #YouCouldn’tMakeItUp. Exhibit A: this article from the Jakarta Globe about clowns marching for political peace. There’s so much about this story that delights me: That Indonesia even has a national clown’s association (and one that has almost as many members as the House of Representatives). That the Jakarta police felt the need to deploy 60 police officers “to ensure the clowns could march safely to Monas.” But mostly of course: That Sumarsono,…

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Pisani commentary on Jakarta elections in Nikkei Asian Review

February 19, 2017

Should Jakarta voters trust a cleric who takes money from Playboy?

On Wednesday, we saw once again that Indonesian voters are more grown up than the people they are voting for. Though the Jakarta elections were repeatedly presented as a test of strength of political Islam, I’ve always thought the white-robed mobs were more a throw-back to the everyday tactics of the Old Guard, as I argue in this commentary in Nikkei Asian Review. But as the capital faces a second round of voting, we can certainly expect the FPI to…