Teddy bear politics : A Potent presidential symbol Julia Suryakusuma  ;   The author of Julia’s Jihad

JAKARTA POST, 02 April 2014

                                      

                                                                                         

                                                             

Have you ever had an encounter with a teddy bear? You know, those soft, cuddly, cute stuffed toys that just beg to be hugged? Be honest … And you would not be alone in thinking that hugging and teddy bears go together naturally. In fact, this is something that has not escaped the attention of Aburizal “Ical” Bakrie, aka ARB, the Golkar Party’s chairman presidential candidate. This is probably why a photo of him with a beaming smiley face hugging a teddy bear has gone viral on the Internet. But far from the photo being the basis of a smear campaign against him, it might be a deliberate tactic of a cunning electoral campaign. Think about it: Hugs are things of awesome power. Their nurturing touch builds trust and a sense of security. The best and most powerful leaders know that these are feelings you have to instill in your electorate, and being a good and powerful leader, Aburizal obviously gets it, too. Clever, huh? And scientists say that hugs boost self-esteem, strengthen the immune system, take away pain, reduce the worry of mortality and cause us to release oxytocin (also known as “the cuddle hormone”!), which is linked to social bonding and devotion. All of these things are obviously essential to electoral politics — in fact, life in general, when you think about it. Vitamin H! Researchers claim that even hugging an inanimate object — a teddy bear, for example — soothes existential fears, and makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The older you are, and the more fragile you are physically, the more important physical contact is. At 67, Aburizal is no spring chicken, so perhaps he should make himself the coordinating minister for hugs. And guess what? Well-hugged babies are less stressed than adults, so the best thing you can do for your kids is hug them — lots. Hmmm, perhaps Aburizal was just doing his bit for Indonesia’s future generations when he took two young actresses, Marcella Zalianty and her sister Olivia Zalianty, on a private plane to the Maldives in 2010 for a holiday, as a reward for their involvement in a Golkar event? Certainly no one on the holiday looked stressed! The photos that have since gone viral, plus a 3-minute YouTube video, show the three of them joking around on the plane, in a boat and then relaxing in a luxury hotel. Sadly, his wife, Tatty Murnitriati, wasn’t there, but they were accompanied by Aziz Syamsuddin, a Golkar member and House of Representatives lawmaker, and, of course, Marcella’s now famous and well-traveled teddy. I reckon that Aburizal’s teddy bear electoral move may also be motivated by the fact that, learned man that he is, he knows it’s a potent presidential symbol. Yes folks, the cuddly teddy bear has its origins in America’s 26th president, Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt. On a hunting trip, Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear as it was injured and suffering. Compassionate or what? The story was picked up by The Washington Post, which ran a cartoon of the incident. Toy-store owners Rose and Morris Michtom saw the cartoon and were inspired to create a stuffed toy bear, named “Teddy” in the president’s honor. It was an immediate hit, and remains popular today, not just in the US but worldwide. Roosevelt has been ranked among America’s top-10 presidents. It’s not for nothing that his was one of four presidential faces carved in stone on Mount Rushmore. Roosevelt was a “real man’s man” but he was also a populist and an astute diplomat, who deftly resolved several crises while in the White House. So, Roosevelt is obviously someone a presidential candidate like Aburizal would want to emulate, which explains the teddy bear symbolism. Aburizal has made his admiration for strong men clear and constantly extols the virtues of our former dictator, Soeharto. On the campaign trail in Sleman, Yogyakarta, last week, accompanied (this time) by his wife, he again said that Soeharto’s government was much better than the current one. “I am ready to move forward as president to reclaim the golden age of Soeharto,” he proclaimed. Hello? Has it slipped Aburizal’s mind that he was coordinating economic minister (Oct. 2004 - Dec. 2005) and coordinating people’s welfare minister (Dec. 2005 - Oct. 2009) under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono? Or does he now think he didn’t do such a great job after all? In any case, given everything going for teddy bears and hugs, I just can’t figure out why so many see the Maldives jaunt in a negative light. Maswadi Rauf, professor of politics from the University of Indonesia (UI), has even said that Aburizal should relinquish his presidential candidacy because the video depicts him as possessing low moral fiber. Even Ais Anantama Said, a Golkar politician, has added that Aburizal’s low electability rating and the fact that he has supposedly tainted Golkar’s reputation mean that he is unsuited to be a presidential candidate. Oh dear! Dissidence among the ranks! Don’t they understand the brilliance of teddy bear politics? Maybe no one does — after all, the damage now seems to have been done. Aburizal’s electability rating has sunk to 16.42 percent, lower than even Jusuf Kalla (17.33 percent) and, surprisingly, lower than a much younger Golkar politician, Priyo Budi Santoso (18.44 percent). None, of course, compare to Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who now rates a stratospheric 53.03 percent, way above even his own party’s leader, Megawati Soekarnoputri (23.37 percent). Oh well, you can’t have everything. Sometimes you have to choose between being popular with the electorate or with young ladies toting teddies. Not an easy choice, huh? But not to worry, even if he loses, Aburizal will still have his teddy bear to squeeze when he wants to feel good! ●

Indonesia’s ‘smoking guns’ : Drugs, tobacco and forest fires

Indonesia’s ‘smoking guns’ : Drugs, tobacco and forest fires Julia Suryakusuma  ;   The author of Julia’s Jihad

JAKARTA POST,  19 Maret 2014

                              

                                                                                         

                                                      

What’s with the media frenzy over Schapelle Corby after her recent parole on Feb. 7 and release on Feb. 10? She’s merely a half-pretty, former Gold Coast beauty student and drug mule from a family with known offenses linked to marijuana, who tried to smuggle 4.2 kilograms of high-grade cannabis. She received parole as she had served two-thirds of her sentence and applied. Other foreigners have done so in the past. Renae Lawrence, one of the Bali 9 will also do the same soon. Nevertheless, Corby’s release on parole drew the ire of Indonesian politicians and anti-narcotics groups. The latter, for example, lambasted President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for granting her a five-year cut from her sentence after she appealed for clemency. He did so after a recommendation from a Supreme Court judge who noted that Corby had been treated for mental illness. However, the anti-narcotics groups said the decision sent out the wrong message to drug traffickers. The Corby media circus also distracts from the real, serious issue of a drug addiction crisis in Indonesia. According to National Anti-narcotics Movement (Gannas) statistics, 1.3 million Indonesians between the ages of 10 and 19 have experimented with drugs, while over 570,000 people in the same age group regularly abuse narcotics. And that could be just the tip of the iceberg. The issue of illegal drugs, however, are only one of Indonesia’s “smoking guns”. The second is tobacco. Despite anti-smoking moves in recent years from the government, Indonesia is still home to nearly 70 million smokers, the third largest in the world. While cigarette consumption is declining worldwide, we are in the throes of an uncontrolled tobacco habit: Indonesia is the new “Marlboro country”. The industry is thriving and international tobacco companies are able to operate in ways they haven’t been able to in the US for over 40 years. According to Sudibyo Markus, head of a smoking reduction team set up by the Indonesian Tobacco Control Network, “cigarette consumption is 302 billion sticks per year now”. This makes the per capita consumption of every Indonesian, including babies, 1,250 cigarettes per year. Babies smoking? Yup. Almost 35 percent of children smoke before the age of 10. Shocking. The government has tried to discourage smoking by imposing various prohibitions (ciggy ads before 10 p.m., under-17s from buying cigarettes), and banning smoking in public areas. These bans are mostly ignored. The cigarette industry generates revenue, so the government’s anti-smoking efforts seem decidedly ambivalent. Indonesia is one of the 10 countries that haven’t signed or ratified the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), while 170 countries have. Indonesia’s third “smoking gun” is of course smoke from annual forest fires. Currently the forest and peat fires originating in Riau are at the highest levels since the 2013 haze emergency caused by large-scale burning in many parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan, which affected much of Southeast Asia: Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and even southern Thailand. Indonesia has yet to ratify an ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution. This year, 55,000 Riau residents are suffering from haze-related illnesses: acute respiratory infections, pneumonia, skin and eye problems. Flights as well as daily activities are disrupted, causing heavy financial losses. What is it about Riau that makes it so vulnerable to fires? It’s home to major palm oil and pulp and paper producers! Many belong to, or supply companies that are household names both in Indonesia and overseas. Aha, now we’re getting somewhere! Around 87 percent of the fire alerts across Sumatra for March 4-11 are in Riau and according to data from the Forestry Ministry, half of them fall within land managed by palm oil, pulpwood and logging concessions. During investigations over the last month, police have named 60 suspects in 40 cases of forest fires in eight regencies and cities in Riau province. Shoot on sight orders have been issued for offenders resisting arrest. But are they really the ones to blame? Surely it’s the big palm oil and pulp companies that should be held responsible. The fires return every year because it’s the cheapest and fastest way of paving the way for new plantations. Naturally, these profit oriented companies disregard the law and operate even in areas pledging zero-burning policies. It’s cheap and fast for them, but everyone else has to pay the price. Nice. Indonesia is now a G20 country with an almost US$1 trillion economy. But it’s also the world’s worst forestry sector offender.  So shameful. Cheap and versatile, at least 50 percent of products on supermarket shelves contain palm oil, including food, cosmetics and cleaning products. We buy these products and without realizing it, we are contributing to the problem. But as consumers, we can change that and vote with our wallets. Think before you buy! Buy only green products that use sustainable palm oil. I have no love for tobacco companies, but now I reckon palm oil companies have overtaken tobacco companies as being the most dangerous. They do widespread and long-lasting damage to the environment, the health of millions of people, and kill wildlife. Unlike smokers or drug addicts, the effect of the fires is not a matter of personal choice. People don’t choose to breath the smoke the forest fires create.  It’s a kind of “mass assault” but the law turns a blind eye maybe because they get paid off? Ah, the good old collusion, corruption and nepotism (KKN)! The law really needs to get tough on companies that are behind the fires, and revoke their permits. Both the companies as well as those who willfully burn rain forests should be heavily punished. Jailed for life and making the offenders plant trees for 10 years with their bare hands. All this is very serious stuff, and has dire consequences for Indonesia’s future generations, and should be constantly exposed in the media to raise public awareness of the severity of the problems. But the combo of a photogenic Aussie girl, drugs and a judicial system in a foreign country which has a reputation for being corrupt and unjust, is irresistible. It’s so much more fun and “newsworthy”, isn’t it boys? ●

The Appeal of Conscience Foundation’s schizoid choice

The Appeal of Conscience Foundation’s schizoid choice Julia Suryakusuma ;  The Author of Julia’s Jihad

JAKARTA POST, 15 Mei 2013

Watch out folks, there’s a rising global mental health crisis!

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental illnesses such as depression, paranoia, trauma, bipolar mood disorder and schizophrenia are on the rise worldwide. Most people think it’s a personal issue, but guess what? It looks like institutions can also be afflicted.

I discovered recently that the Appeal of Conscience Foundation (ACF), an interfaith coalition of business and religious leaders founded by Rabbi Arthur Schneier in 1965, is suffering from schizophrenia. I say this because they seem to be unable to tell the difference between what’s real and what is not. 

Maybe it’s just a case of cognitive dissonance. Whatever the cause, there sure seems to be a serious gap between perception and reality within the ACF.

Just look at ACF’s website, appealofconscience.org. It gives its slogan as “A crime committed against religion is the greatest crime against religion”. 

And yet on May 30, they are planning to give President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) their Statesman Award “in recognition of his work to support human rights and religious freedom in the country”.

Huh? Maybe members of the ACF should come to Indonesia and see for themselves how our government turns a blind eye to religious intolerance and is sometimes even complicit in religious persecution and violence. Or perhaps just a minute or two on the Internet would have been enough.

After all, the press here and overseas is replete with stories about rising religious intolerance in Indonesia and the persecution of Ahmadis, Sunnis, Christians and other religious minorities. Headlines blare: “Indonesia’s Rising Religious Intolerance” (The New York Times, May 21, 2012 — the local rag for the ACF!), “Jakarta Condones Religious Violence” (The Asian Wall Street Journal, Feb. 27), “Rights group says Indonesia a hotbed of religious intolerance and corruption” (Global Post, Feb. 28).

And there are oodles of articles and letters from readers stating their objections to SBY being given the award, as well as a petition on Facebook and on change.org, titled “SBY is no statesman! — Foundation should withdraw World Statesman Award to Indonesia’s President”.

For something in more depth, check out the website of Kontras (the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence) for an excellent account — in English — of why SBY is undeserving of the World Statesman Award (www.kontras.org).

Then there’s the video made by Humanitad, an international interfaith and intercultural organization about the tragic case of Anand Krishna, Indonesian spiritual teacher and prominent proponent of religious freedom (www.humanitad.org). The video is shocking not just because it details the persecution of Anand but also because it reveals that certain groups want to crush religious freedom in Indonesia.

And closer to home, how about reading the Human Rights Watch February Report In Religion’s Name: Abuses against Religious Minorities in Indonesia. Their headquarters are at 350 Fifth Avenue New York, not far from the ACF’s HQ on 119 West 57th Street. But guess what? You can download the report from the Internet wherever you are in the world!

Sure, SBY talks the talk — especially in international forums — but does he walk the walk at home? Nope. He engages in lofty rhetoric supporting religious tolerance abroad but falls sadly short of acting decisively in support of the rule of law and the rights of religious minorities. 

He even fails to take disciplinary action against government officials such as Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali who encourage abuses (see “Minister: Christians bring discrimination on themselves”, The Jakarta Post, April 2; “Minister calls for Ahmadiyah to be disbanded”, the Post, Aug. 31, 2010).

In this way, SBY seems to be ignoring not only the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which Indonesia ratified in 2005, but also the guarantees of freedom of religion in our own Constitution. Another case of schizophrenia?

So why is the ACF making the same mistake as the Queen of England (who bestowed the Honorary Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath on SBY in October 2012) by giving an award to a man who doesn’t deserve it?

Maybe it has something to do with the politics of award giving. Outfits like ACF are always on the lookout for someone to award — it’s sort of self-serving after all. You create a raison d’être for yourself, so you go down the list, ticking people off and eventually you think, hey, wouldn’t it be nice to “recognize” the elected, democratic leader of the world’s largest Muslim nation? 

There is, however, something deliciously ironic in the fact that SBY will be given the award by a Jewish rabbi when Indonesia doesn’t even include Judaism as a recognized official religion. Maybe someone should point this out to Rabbi Schneier?

Yes, I know, the ACF is a pretty innocuous, moderate and mainstream group that “works on behalf of religious freedom and human rights throughout the world”. But giving an award to SBY endorses his weak and hypocritical response to the religious intolerance that is beginning to tear our nation apart.

The Setara Institute is an Indonesian based NGO that conducts research and advocacy on democracy and human rights. Their website setera-institute.org is a mother-lode of information about religious intolerance in Indonesia, and now they’ve developed the hypothesis that intolerance is the starting point of terrorism. 

Is this what we want? Is this what the world needs? Is this really what the ACF is awarding? How schizophrenic! ●

Children : Teach them well and let them lead the way

Children : Teach them well and let them lead the way Julia Suryakusuma ;  The Author of Jihad Julia

JAKARTA POST, 01 Mei 2013

When I returned from Italy after my parents completed their diplomatic posting in 1971, I enrolled at what was supposedly the best school in East Jakarta. In Rome, I had attended Marymount International High School and had received not only an excellent education but a foundation for life: it was there I learned how to think.

I went with my mother for an interview with my new Jakarta headmaster. After examining my documents, he decided I would be admitted to the first year of SMA (senior high school), a year lower than at Marymount. 

I was indignant. In Rome, I had been allowed to skip two years and enter grade 9 instead of 7, my school grade when I left Jakarta. When I told the headmaster about this, his reply was, “Oh, most schools abroad are only better at mathematics, nothing else”. Much to the consternation of my mother, I retorted, “If our education system is so great, then why is our country in such a mess?” There was no answer.

More than 40 years later, Indonesia is still a mess — certainly as far as its education system is concerned. The incompetence, possible corruption and lack of transparency behind the recent national exam fiasco seems to mirror the reality of governance and politics in Indonesia in general (see “Calls mount for education and culture minister to resign”, The Jakarta Post, April 29). 

In February this year, Aljazeera’s weekly report “East 101” looked at why Indonesia’s education system is, as it claimed, “one of the worst in the world”. The program cited a landmark education report that measured literacy, test results, graduation rates and other key benchmarks in 50 nations. Indonesia ranked last. 

So what’s wrong with Indonesia’s education system? Sadly, just about everything. Here’s the list (and, believe it or not, folks, it’s not exhaustive!):

The majority of teachers — especially in elementary school — are neither properly qualified nor trained and “upgraded” on a regular basis. The student-teacher ratio is one of the lowest in the world. The curriculum is poorly thought out, even illogical. One depressing example is the recent plan to drop science, social studies and reduce English instruction, replacing them with “character building” subjects like Islamic studies and local culture. There are also too many subjects taught, and they are spread too thinly, over-burdening students. 

In fact, the curriculum in general is not geared to “learning for the future”, as a good education must be. The exam and evaluation system also needs much improvement. It’s currently aimed more at simply “passing” the student rather than making him or her understand what is being taught. And, of course, there is a serious lack of professionalism among the regional education officers and school staff, including headmasters and school administrators.

While the education budget is high enough — approximately Rp 70 trillion (US$7.2 billion) allocated for the central level and Rp 200 trillion for the regions — it is not properly allocated. Partly as a result, infrastructure is very bad: of about 900,000 elementary school classrooms throughout the country, only 42 percent are in good shape, 35 percent are in disrepair and almost 25 percent are heavily damaged. Books are likewise often incomplete, and many schools don’t have laboratories or even libraries. Some even lack roofs or walls!

Wow! This is equivalent to a train-wreck in a country where school-age children number 58 million. And children are supposed to be our future? The way things are going, are we slowly but surely flushing our future down the toilet?

Then I read about the PISA tests. 

No, nothing to do with that leaning tower in Italy. PISA stands for the Program for International Student Assessment of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and it has become the leading international benchmark for education. 

Andreas Schleicher, the head of PISA — a tall, slender, flinty-eyed, snow-haired German statistician — designed a test administered to hundreds of thousands of 15 year-olds around the world that gives “unprecedented insight into how well national education systems are preparing their students for adult life…[and]… their readiness for ‘knowledge worker’ jobs — their ability to think critically and solve real-world problems”.

In a fascinating and inspiring TED talk, Schleicher said that the story of PISA is “a story of how international comparisons have globalized the field of education that we usually treat as an affair of domestic policy”.

The latest PISA results (in 2010) were a “Shanghai surprise”: the largest city of the People’s Republic of China came out with top scores. Shanghai students, including migrant students, were highest in every aspect (math, reading and science). 

When it comes to countries, however, Finland and South Korea rank number one and two on the PISA scale. According to Schleicher, South Korea shows what’s possible. Two generations ago, its standard of living was the same as Afghanistan today, one of the lowest education performers. Today, every Korean finishes high school. By contrast, the US — No. 1 in the 1960s — now ranks 17th.

One of Schleicher’s several encouraging findings is that “we no longer live in a world that is neatly divided between rich and well-educated countries and poor and badly-educated ones”. Luxembourg for example, spends as much per student as Korea but ranks only in the 20s. He also says that there are several countries that combine excellence with equity, which is good news for poor village children worldwide — including in Indonesia!

Schleicher’s conclusion: “In a global economy, it is no longer national improvement that’s the benchmark for success, but the best performing education systems internationally”.

And that’s big question: Can Indonesia reinvent its school system and do a Korea before it’s too late? Maybe not, but even a Luxembourg wouldn’t be bad outcome, given where PISA puts us now — a sad number 58 (out of 66). ●