May 26, 2014

Can a movie cure blindness? Jalanan reveals urban poverty

I got an e-mail today from film-maker extraordinaire Daniel Ziv. His documentary Jalanan, about street musicians and urban poverty in Jakarta, has been playing to great acclaim around the world, noticed by publications such as The Economist and the Wall Street Journal, that tend to devote more column inches to the winners of Indonesia’s erratic growth-fest than to the losers. The film deserves their attention. But in his e-mail, Daniel was rightly more excited about the attention the film is…

Indonesia Etc ebook icon

May 11, 2014

Test-drive the Indonesia Etc enhanced e-book (for free!)

The big, solid, heavy-in-the-hand, proud-on-the-bookshelf hardback version of Indonesia Etc will be out in less than a month in the UK and Asia, six weeks in the US. But I’ve spent the last few months working on something that I think is at least as exciting: an electronic version of the text, which also has embedded videos, photos, recordings and other things that I think help convey the sights, sounds and oddities of Indonesia. I recorded most of the material…

Coronation of the Sultan of Yogyakarta, 1989

April 22, 2014

Albinos, dwarves and royalty: the magic of Java

Last month was the 15th anniversary of the coronation of the Sultan of Yogyakarta; here’s a belated tribute. I covered the coronation for Reuters in Indonesia, accompanied by the fabulous photographer Enny Nuraheni. Here are some of her pictures, rescued from the trash. The dwarves, albinos and albino dwarves that the Sultan keeps at court are supposed to concentrate mystical power around his person. He’s not all mystical though; he is a businessman who once had presidential ambitions and has…

Pater Bernadus Bode, served in Lamalera, 1920-1951

April 18, 2014

An easter treat: Catholic kitsch from around Indonesia

There are just seven million Catholics in Indonesia — a drop in a mainly Moslem ocean. Yet they have managed to make their mark aesthetically, with an astoundingly wide variety of statues, murals, graveyards and churches that range between Kitsch and High Kitsch….

April 10, 2014

More Moslem than expected: the real surprise of Indonesia’s polls

Commentators on Indonesia’s parliamentary elections have been surprised by the relatively poor performance of front-runners PDIP (see the FT, the Jakarta Post, the Jakarta Globe for examples). But the real surprise is surely the much better than expected showing by Islamic parties. Islamic parties have seen their share of the vote slide steadily over the years. Just last week, the New York Times predicted that the PPP, the oldest Islamic party, would fail to make the threshold for parliamentary seats…

Indonesian polling station

April 9, 2014

Is Indonesia more democratic than the UK?

Indonesians love to complain about politicians, about parliament, about political parties. But they are much more enthusiastic democrats than citizens of many other nations. More than seven out of ten of Indonesia’s 171 million registered voters showed up at the polls in the last national parliamentary elections in 2009, compared with fewer than two thirds in the UK and a lamentable 40 percent in the US in 2010. Most expect a high turnout in today’s elections, too. Indonesia is also…

Pelipus, 1991 - Under-age warrior

March 25, 2014

Rediscovering Sumba (and a working slideshow)

I was first invited to take tea with a corpse in Sumba, in southeastern Indonesia, some 23 years ago. It was also in 1991 that I first attended a pasola, a wonderful jousting match which aims to secure a good harvest by spilling human blood. During that visit to Sumba, my friend Enny and I both photographed a boy wearing primary school uniform shorts and the head-dress of a jouster. He was too young to go riding out, but his “don’t mess with me” look advertised his intention to become a warrior to be feared….

March 3, 2014

The democratic dividend: Trickle-down corruption in Indonesian elections

Indonesian Presidential candidate Gita Wirjawan is talking up the “democratic dividend”. It’s a pun on the “demographic dividend” so beloved of the foreign analysts who write hubristic reports about Indonesia’s glorious future. This particularly laughable example from McKinsey, mostly based on interviews the then Trade Minister Mr. Wirjawan and his like, pimped the wonders of Indonesia’s demographic dividend just a few months before the economy (and the rupiah) went into a nosedive….