So I did a little math this morning. Between Makassar, Balikpapn and Yogyakarta, we've spent a least forty hours in vans. At least. It's like a full time job. And don't imagine us zipping down four lane interstates. these are the old two-lane roads that go through town instead of going around them. Mr Kelly told me that it used take nine hours to drive from Amherst to New York City - I'm talking about those roads. Past every shop front, every warung, every school child in a uniform waiting for a bus and every man smoking a clove cigarette and waiting for whatever it is that they wait for.
To state the obvious, an exchange like this isn't always about destinations; it's about the journeys. The time that we have spent in cars with Indonesian teachers has been some of the best spent time of our whole trip. We've gotten to know each other over long, long talks as the rice fields and hills slid by. Talks about schools and religions, about good books and why we chose to teach, about how we met our spouses and how to swear in several languages.
There's much to share from those talks, but I'm just going to get a quick paragraph in about politics because I think I'm getting the hang of it after a few weeks. Legislative and presidential elections are coming up this spring. The campaign season is in its early stages. The streets and intersections are bedecked with a bewildering array of multicolored party flags and photo-shopped posters. It's difficult for me to imagine what Indonesia would look like without political posters because it's such a part of the landscape now. The exact number of parties varies from province to province, but everyone agrees that there are at least 28 parties in this election and maybe 38 or 40. And every party runs multiple candidates. Naturally, it's difficult for voters to identify any particularly good people or even good platforms from the field.
Still, in our conversations a few themes have consistently emerged. People are worried about security, corruption and the global economic crisis - though not necessarily in that order. The incumbent president, vice president and the former president represent the three biggest parties. They are all well-known and don't offer much specific variety on the security and economic agendas. Unfortunately, the Indonesian voters that I've talked to also associate teh big parties with corruption; to have been successful is almost by definition to have had some ties to the corporate and private money that generate the corruption. Another important perception is that the party which could best reduce corruption in Indonesian political culture is the PKS - a party that derives its core values from Islamic values. It's not clear how much the PKS stands for ethical government in general and how much it stands for specifically Muslim government. The PKS claims are very inclusive, but people in several cities have told me that the PKS has a "hidden agenda" of establishing sharia law for all of Indonesia. It can't be that hidden if everyone suspects. At any rate, the voters and students (voting age is 17) are left with some unpalatable choices: give up some religious pluralism in return for "clean government" or accept that a certain amount of corruption will go with secular party politics. Democracy is messy and these choices aren't immutable, but it's a good snapshot of what Indonesian voters are concerned about today.
We'll keep driving and I'll ask a few more questions while we're at it.
No comments:
Post a Comment