At the rate it’s taking a page out of the strongman’s playbook and has been stumbling in its pandemic response, Indonesia may be carving out the new normal in how it is running state affairs. Any hopes of a reversal of this tide — in the coming year and the foreseeable future — appear dim.
It doesn’t help that the economy is in the doldrums and labor woes are hounding millions of Indonesians amid COVID-19 travails.
Gloomy economy
“I completely stopped working starting in March,” said Afry Haman, 24, a former diving instructor living in the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara.
Haman, who used to earn a living from guiding foreign tourists to diving sites in Labuan Bajo, a fishing town and popular tourist destination, is now forced to go back to his hometown of Ruteng, where his parents live. He has taken up a new profession as a motorcycle taxi ojek driver to survive.
Haman is just one of thousands of Indonesia’s labor force who is reeling from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy.
International tourist arrivals in Indonesia have been slashed nearly 90 percent year-on-year with only 153,498 arrivals in September 2020, as the global pandemic continues to force countries to implement travel restrictions, according to Statistics Indonesia.
In the Indonesian capital city Jakarta, Atha struggles to make ends meet by selling chiffon cakes after the hair salon she used to run was closed. A trans woman living with her daughter and sister, Atha relies on the government’s relief aid.
In the past few months, Atha has helped local LGBTQ groups cook and distribute food to trans communities living in the poorest areas in the city. She said her biggest worry now is for the trans women who have to survive by busking on the streets.
“Their biggest income these days is perhaps IDR 50,000 ($3.55); some days it’s zero. During this pandemic, people call them names like ‘Queen Corona’ or ‘Virus Carrier.’ Tensions are high,” Atha said.
Afry and Atha are among 29.12 million Indonesians (14.28 percent) affected by COVID-19, Statistics Indonesia reported in November. A total of 2.56 million people have lost their jobs; 760,000 can’t get jobs; 1.77 million are temporarily unemployed; and 24 million have experienced a reduction in working hours due to the pandemic, the report said.
When the outbreak was first reported out of Wuhan, China, in early January, Indonesia had just come out from a series of protests and social unrest incited by the revision of anti-corruption body the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), and a racist video against Papuan students that went nationwide viral. The economy was growing by 5 percent and had been expected to grow 5.2 percent in 2020.
Spike in human rights violations
Quite apart from the economic challenges currently confronting Indonesia, the country’s state of human rights is even more worrisome amid the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Human rights organizations warned about the deteriorating climate of democracy in Indonesia as it began the new year. But the manifold turns of events from the coronavirus pandemic accelerated what was already ripening.
The well-documented hacking and arrest of public policy researcher Ravio Patra in April foreshadowed the rising trajectory of violations of human rights. Ravio, who had been a vocal critic of the government’s COVID-19 response among other issues, found his WhatsApp account hacked in an apparent attempt to frame him for a crime of inciting a riot, after which he was arrested by a group of policemen, who later released him due to public pressure and lack of evidence.
“Just enjoy it,” Indonesia’s health minister Terawan Agus Putranto smilingly told local reporters who raised concerns. Lighthearted jokes about the virus were thrown around by a number of public officials as reports on how the outbreak in ground zero was not being contained grew louder.
A weekly protest called Kamisan is staged in front of the presidential palace in Jakarta in February 2020 to demand investigation of human rights violations in the country.
Disregard for science
Such a flippant attitude by civil servants toward the coronavirus is matched only by little respect for science in quelling the pandemic.
Recommendations from experts and scientists were ignored. The first of these was a call to promptly ban international flights from Wuhan. Another was to conduct proper contact tracing and testing, as cases started to appear in Jakarta, and when the numbers began to spiral up, to put the city in full or partial lockdown. As these proposed measures went unheeded, cases began to appear in all provinces in Indonesia.
As of late November, there were 534,266 infection cases in Indonesia with 16,815 deaths. The virus spread shows no signs of slowing, and the economy has officially entered recession for the first time since 1998 with the GDP shrinking 3.49 percent in the July-September period, data from the statistics bureau showed. Up to the third quarter of 2020, the economy contracted 2.03 percent.
Indonesian epidemiologist Pandu Riono said lack of coordination in national and regional levels has been Indonesia’s largest problem in its efforts to flatten the curve of infections since day one. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has formed two task forces since March: the COVID-19 Response Acceleration Task Force, which was dissolved in July after four months of operation, and the COVID-19 Handling and Economic Recovery Committee to replace the former.
No one knows what they’re doing, Riono said. The national emergency status which was put in place in April drags on although it does little to put the genie back in the bottle while making it hard for anyone to set long-term objectives and clear time frames.
“We need to start from scratch again. Dissolve the ad hoc task forces and let the National Development Planning Agency take over all the planning,” he said. “This thing can go on for five years,” he warned.
Riono also pointed out how political and economic motives have been muddying the COVID-19 pandemic response, creating contradictory policies, such as advising the people not to go out during long holidays while simultaneously opening tourist attractions to help the economy.
Neo-authoritarianism
Jokowi’s critics have long warned that some policies — such as disobeying the Constitutional Court decision in 2016 regarding customary forests, giving armed forces important roles in the government, and criminalization of government critics — rolled out under his rule restrict civic freedoms and undermine democracy. But as the pandemic rages on and technology picks up speed this year, the government’s surveillance, intimidation, and repressive measures are only intensifying both offline and online.
If in 2019 the government’s authoritarian orders seemed like out-of-place maneuvers, then in 2020 they have become the normal standard of procedures, said Asfinawati, chairperson of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI).
Students hold a protest in August 2020 against the controversial proposed Omnibus Law at the House of Representatives in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Direct criminalization of activists, students, workers, and farmers remains the top ploy to silence dissidents, but other methods — more disguised and cryptic — are finding their cozy place in this perpetuated emergency, she added.
YLBHI reported that on March 30, 2020, the president stated that a civil emergency policy was to be declared to accompany public health emergencies. Although the statement was not officially enforced, it was never officially revoked either.
Five days later, the National Police sent out a telegram about giving a deterrent effect to people who insult the president.
“Carry out cyber patrols to monitor situation developments, as well as opinions in cyberspace, with the target of spreading hoaxes related to COVID-19, hoaxes related to government policies in anticipating the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak, insults to the authorities/president and government officials,” part of the telegram said.
In early October 2020, during mass protests throughout the nation against the controversial Omnibus Law – which is widely seen to adversely impact job security and curtail labor rights – the National Police again sent out a telegram instructing regional police departments to build counter-narratives against issues that discredit the government.
“Conduct cyber patrols on social media and do media management to build the public opinions against demonstrations in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic. Conduct counter-narratives on issues that discredit the government,” the telegram said.
“That was very strange, as it is not the police’s job to build opinions,” Asfinawati said. “The motives for inhibiting freedom are becoming more disguised.”
Arif Susanto, political analyst at consultancy Exposit Strategic, echoed Asfinawati’s view that the authoritarian symptoms are worsening and becoming harder to detect.
For one, intimidation now comes in the form of anonymous digital attacks. Social media accounts of academics, students, workers union leaders, and researchers vocal in their criticisms against the government’s policies were hacked by unknown actors in efforts to frame them for a crime or taint their reputation. News websites including Tempo.co, Tirto.id, and Kompas.com have also been targeted. Susanto said it is extremely hard to point a finger, but ordinary citizens would not have the resources and motives to carry out such attacks.
For another, he noted that a disguised intimidation tactic could now be contact tracing, which has a potential to be misused and propelled by political agendas. According to local media reports national COVID-19 task force chief Doni Monardo called on the people who had participated in mass gatherings with Muslim cleric Rizieq Shihab to report themselves to local authorities and get tested. Shihab is the leader of Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), a hardline Islamist group created in 1998 with the backing of the military and has demanded for Jokowi’s resignation several times.
“Regardless of the fact that the FPI is a vigilante group, that move has incited fear among the supporters,” Susanto said.
Susanto and Asfinawati predicted escalating attacks on perceived government opponents and ordinary citizens, and ramped up authoritarian measures in 2021. Both agreed that COVID-19 will still be a main threat next year.
Epidemiologist Riono said that Indonesia is projected to continue seeing a rising curve of COVID-19 infections from local elections slated for December 9 and the year-end holidays.
From the political side of things, Susanto said local elections are expected to contribute to the shakes and shifts of coalitions at the national level. Expect, too, increased political tension and social frictions from economic recession.
Susanto and Riono both stressed that with no clear COVID-19 response plan and scenarios from the government, uncertainty will only deepen. The government is pursuing vaccinations as the main strategy to counter the pandemic and has placed orders with vaccine suppliers like Sinovac Biotech and AstraZeneca.
“They think vaccines will solve everything,” Riono said. “The number of cases will only rise and reach its peak next year.”
Arif wondered aloud if Indonesia was at the door of another socio-political shift far larger than what can be forecasted today.
“There was a saying ‘Jakarta is heavy with child’ to describe situations leading up to the social revolution in the mid-1960s,” Arif said, referring to the 1965 so-called coup that preceded the Indonesian genocide, with approximately 500,000 to a million accused of being communists murdered.
“A colleague of mine recently remarked: ‘Jakarta is with child again.’” ●
Antonia Timmerman is an independent journalist in Jakarta. She reports on topics such as migrant workers, LGBTQ communities, and art and culture for outlets such as The South China Morning Post, VICE, and The Diplomat.
