It’s really all one big happy family . . .

Did you ever wonder why, if Prabowo was such a fundamentalist bully and Jokowi was such a snappily-dressed man of the people, the election was so close?

It’s because at the Indonesian presidential “court,” it’s just one big game of loyalty-swapping.  Can ideology-swapping be far behind?

A little tidbit from Wati:

As the first installment of my sins before the next Eid Mubarak, please be informed that I just received a text message from my friend in Jakarta, who attended a state visit at the presidential offices. SBY, Budiono, Mega, bu Umar Wirahadikusumah etc. were all there, including the Crown Princess.

[okay, a primer for those of you who are not up on your Indonesian “royalty:”

SBY is  Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, current President.  He will turn over the presidency to Jokowi in October.

Budiono is the current Vice President.

Mega is of course Diah Permata Megawati Setiawati Sukarnoputri, the 5^th President of Indonesia (serving as Vice President under Abdurrahman Wahid  until his removal in 2001, when she took office until 2004.) She is now chair of the PDIP-the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle.

Bu Umar Wirahadikusumah is the widow of the fourth Indonesian Vice President, who served from 1983 to 1988.)

And Puan Maharani, aka the "Crown Princess" among Jakarta wags, is Megawati’s daughter from her marriage to Taufiq Kiemas.  She holds the second highest positin in PDIP after Megawati, her mother. She is seen as “very arrogant and ambitious,” but rather dull-witted.

Got it?]

My friend was very concerned and scared to watch the behavior of the Crown Princess and acting Lady of the House.

The Crown Princess is so SNOBBISH! And she keeps proving her reputation over and over.

She as well as her cold hearted mom ignored guests unless they approached them first. While any host and/ or hostess is supposed to greet and thanks visitor, especially on Lebaran.

Then the CP and mom were  "attacked" (their term) by the conglomerates who wanted to have their photos taken with them . . .

Oh dear . . .poor Jokowi . . . hopefully he is NOT part of it . . .

Lets pray Jokowi will not put her in his cabinet despite the obvious pressure from President # 5.

I have to check but I think my dad was the witness when Puan got married . . . like most of other Soekarno children my father was involved because of his close relation with Soekarno.

This is the political game that's going on now. Jokowi  became the presidential candidate because Megawati’s party--PDIP –chose and supported . Mega’s game plan in the beginning was to have herself and Jokowi as one ticket.

In 2004 the ticket to oppose SBY had been Mega and Prabowo as president and VP.

But SBY won. So Mega split with Prabowo and Prabowo started a new party which is Gerindra.

Indonesia’s second president, Soeharto, belonged to the Golkar party. Prabowo married Titiek Soeharto.  They divorced after Soeharto’s downfall, and became very distant.

But Prabowo used his relation with the Soeharto family during the presidential campaign, and of course this infuriated Mega. On the other hand, both Mega’s and Prabowo’s parties, PDIP and Gerindra, supported Jokowi when he ran for Jakarta Governor, especially since Ahok, the deputy governor, is from Gerindra.

[is your head hurting?  Me, I need 6 aspirin and a nap.]

FYI JKW and Prabowo have not yet met with each other during Lebaran, although both came to see President SBY.

Hatta’s youngest daughter, was once very much a Gerindra activist but she soon quit Gerindra after she found out that she was just being used.

So Prabowo has used the daughters of Soekarno, Hatta  and Soeharto. 

Quite the trifecta of sleaze.

Does not this sound like a soap opera...?

In other news:

I celebrated Lebaran at the Indonesian Embassy in Hanoi with a friend who’s at the Islamic National Bank in Kuala Lumpur. The food, especially the lontong cap go meh, was superb and most of my fellow countrymen were well behaved.  Except for one senior diplomat who argued that Jokowi is very bad for the country and will make Indonesia bankrupt within one year. When I suggested that he give JKW time to prove himself over the next 5 years, and that the worst case scenario is we can impeach him if he is so bad, this diplomat became unfriendly.

Thank God the food was so good . . . or else my shoe was ready to fly over his head. . . .

Who says politics is boring?

The election count that wouldn’t die . . .

So first it’s “either Monday or Tuesday.”  Then it’s “Tuesday.”  Then it’s “4pm today” (which has passed, by the way, in Jakarta.)  It’s more painful to sit through than a Broadway turkey.

But foreign correspondent Wati has added some Minolos-on-the-ground reportage, which makes it bearable. (She is actually in Vietnam at the moment, madly IM-ing her friends in the ‘hood.)

The latest:

Good morning from uncle Ho to Uncle Sam.

I've been exchanging emails until way after midnight just before sahur (the meal you take at dawn, during Ramadan).

So much to do that I missed my sahur last night. Even though I usually skip food and only drink a glass of water . . .

So:  the name of our new president next October is JOKO WIDODO, in short JOKOWI-- a person from humble origins who has defeated the super rich and arrogant elites . . . I am proud of my country.

Sara, I also did not trust JKW’s "cleanliness" either but after listening and watching his performance ( which was either genuine or pure acting) I must say I want to give him a chance to bring about change. In fact he has done it by giving Jakarta’s poor residents a free health card, free school and moved few families who lived in shacks along the Jakarta riverbank to low cost apts. Of course he has not completed this program yet.

If nothing else, there is a glimpse of hope if we watch his actions as governor.

On the other hand, I was distressed to watch the performance of the Cendana family. I  doubt that if Pak Harto (Suharto) were still alive, he would not want Ical Bakrie nor Amien Rais and  PKS joining his Golkar paty.

In this context, I watched few Gerindra utube where it showed PRW [Prabowo]  using Mega and Halida Hatta to promote his image as close to Soekarno- Hatta legacy.

Meanwhile around his ranch he showed how he try to have " bibit unggul" by cross-breeding goats, exactly the concept used for cows in Pak Harto’s TAPOS! [Tapos was a 700-HA former Dutch-owned ranch that then- President Suharto used as a kind of agricultural “best practices” demo farm, and made gifts of the superior cross-bred animals to various dignitaries.]

But PRW did not mention a word that he copied this program from TAPOS.

Finally, Titiek [Prabowo-s ex-wife] seemed unaware that she was being used by her ex husband and willing to support PRW openly in public.

Unlike Mega[wati] and Halida, who that left PRW long time ago. . .

Jokowi is a member of Megawati’s party and surprisingly as the chairman of the party Mega entrusted Jokowi as the party candidate. On a personal note:  as much as my personal relation became strained with Mega, I respected her choice and the stand she took.

Mega just announced Jokowi as the winner tonight and there were tears in her eyes.

The final count: Jokowi 53.15%  Prabowo 46.85% from 33 provinces.

Done. Election finished . . . young people on social media are having a great time calling Prabowo a childish cowboy (he has tens of hectares of ranch with 130 horses . . . ) [I still want that horse I saw him  on a few months ago]

One twitter post claimed this is a good day and proved that Prabowo indeed has great talent. That is because it has been almost 2 years that Jokowi has been Jakarta’s governor and he is still unable to resolve Jakarta’s traffic nightmare. But today, after Prabowo made his decision [to contest the election], the whole city is deserted and like a ghost town....

[email a few hours later]

Breaking news

Prabowo, candidate no 1, has rejected the election committee’s result which will be announced within 1 hr. [and we saw how they kept to THAT promise.]

He accused the committee of acting against our constitution. [Nice work, since he thought they were in his pocket and they recused themselves—gosh I hate it when ethics rules the day, don’t you?]

Why did he wait until the end to protest? 

Our news broadcasts are now saying that if you are in a game then you have to protest before the game starts or after it has finished.

Interestingly, his running mate (Hatta who happens to be the in-law of president SBY) was not there when Prabowo contested this election.

Indonesia is now entering democracy with the style of Wild West...I guess.

So I wrote her back:

Thanks so much Wati. It is such great news. Now maybe the global community will put Prabowo back on the lists they had him on and forbid him entrance.  Unfortunately, I feel that it is the beginning of a really hard time for Indonesia. This crazed lunatic will not take this lying down. He is going to fight and I doubt it will be clean. Do you remember when Gus Dor won and PDI Struggle took to the street with violence and in the end Mega was VP, soon to be President. As they say, it is not over to the fat lady sings and I do not think that she has uttered one note yet. I hope that I am wrong and am just an old cynic who has seen to much.

Thanks for being the greatest foreign correspondent--but your job is far from over!!

The latest news snippet:

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/07/22/indonesia-awaits-new-president.html

Despite complaints from the Prabowo Subianto-Hatta Rajasa presidential candidate ticket, the General Elections Commission (KPU) has invited the pair, along with front-runner Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and running mate Jusuf Kalla, to attend the announcement of the 2014 presidential election result today.

KPU chairman Husni Kamil Manik said on Monday that neither ticket was obliged to come to the meeting to officiate the winner, but both were welcome to attend.

“The national tabulation process has run well and there is no doubt that we will announce the winner tomorrow,” he said.

The KPU is scheduled to declare the winner at 4 p.m. Tuesday.

The official vote tally at the KPU headquarters in Jakarta had reviewed results from 22 of 33 provinces as of Monday night. According to earlier vote-count results, Jokowi-Kalla was in the lead with a total of 41,127,377 votes, or 51.4 percent of the total of about 80 million legitimate votes.

Jokowi was winning in 14 provinces while Prabowo was leading in the remaining eight provinces.

War criminals behaving badly

 “All murderers are punished, unless they kill in large numbers, and to the sound of trumpets.”

          --Voltaire

These words are the first to appear in the opening scenes of the film “The Act of Killing,” which shows that the Indonesian Death Squads of the 60’s through the late 90’s are alive and well and highly supported in Indonesia.  They’re now dressed in the garb of the so-called “Pancasila Youth” paramilitary organization, which appears at legislative and political events of every type. They revel in being ‘gangsters’ and in the film they claim this word signifies ‘free men.’ Prabowo has admitted to being a part of these activities during his tenure as General in the TNI, though only the kidnapping bits, and only because he was ordered to.

And now, the post-election smear campaign, as brought to us by our Indonesian based cub reporters, has taken an unsettling turn: Prabowo’s supporters, having come up with nothing new to blame on Jokowi, are accusing his camp of the same anti-communist genocide, torture, and unlawful military action that Prabowo was accused of.

Jusuf Wanadi, Chinese Indonesian politician and his brother, well-known businessman Sofjan, have been supporters of Jokowi (which makes sense, since if Prabowo is elected and makes good on his uber-isolationist threats, it’ll be a cold day in the hot place before any type of significant company will want to do business there).  In his youth Jusuf was a student activist and in in 1971 co-founded the well-known Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a non-profit think tank that advised the government on social, international, political and economical issues, and which is still active today.  However, during Suharto’s presidency the group was seen as suspect because of its inclusion of Catholic and Chinese interests. Sofjan was an anti-communist activist during the 1960’s, and Prabowo has now tied all these tidbits into a neat package and delivered it as proof that everyone surrounding Jokowi was actually more involved in war crimes than he ever was.  They’re “colonialist,” they’re “imperialist . . .” but wait . . . wasn’t that Prabowo’s actual campaign platform?

Prabowo recently gave an interview to BBC in which he declared victory in the face of overwhelming polls to the contrary, and stated that if by some chance (voter fraud, he assumed) he lost, he would recede quietly into private life, where he really wanted to be anyway, because he is only running for president, you see, because his country needs him.

In a pig’s eye.

However, out of the gate he springs yesterday, maligning anyone who might have even dry-cleaned Jokowi’s suits. There’s talk of him even appealing the decision to the Constitutional court (Mahkamah Konstitusi) whose former chairman is (surprise!) a member of Prabowo’s campaign team.

I know southeast Asia well enough to know that there is no side, or party, or politician, who is not tied to Indonesia’s inglorious past in some way.  One side does not commit war crimes while the other side sits on the sidelines knitting mittens and smiling beatifically. 

But I also know that this last ditch “I’m not the war criminal—he is!” ploy reeks of desperation.  If it works, however . . . .well, look who we’ll be dealing with.  Sound the trumpets.

Who won: you think *I* know??

Well, knock me over with a feather.  24 hours after the polls have closed and both candidates are claiming victory.  The Guardian did an hour-by-hour account after the polls closed, which is an interesting read, complete with each candidate’s “victory” speech, and a quick recap of the new low to which this campaign has sunk in terms of sleazy “black” ads that include a faux condolence ad upon Jokowi’s death (“RIP Jokowi.”)

 Wati & Co. are especially amused by a YouTube video that had Prabowo maligning everything from the people who didn’t vote for him to the surveys that said he got fewer votes. 

12:15AM AEST

End-of-day summary
Voting in Indonesia's presidential election has finished with both sides claiming victory.
• Quick counts – sample polls counted to give an indication of the overall result – suggested that former Jakarta governor Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, the favourite going into the election, had triumped. Jokowi told supporters that he and his running mate, Jusuf Kalla, had scored a victory.
• But opponent Prabowo Subianto refused to concede, instead claiming that he had topped the poll. He said he and vice-presidential hopeful Hatta Rajasa had won "in many, many areas".
• Outgoing president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will meet with both sets of candidates this evening. He appealed for calm while the wait for the official results goes on. There have been no reports of violence.
• The verified results are set to be released on 21-22 July, with the possiblility that legal challenges could delay the final verdict further. The new president should take up his post in October.
That's it for this live blog for today. Thank you for reading.

 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/09/indonesia-elections-live

Two tweets from pal Michael Bachard of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age: 
 
Michael Bachelard        ✔ @mbachelard 

Jokowi digs more at Prabowo: "It was achieved through hard work, day and night, not by promising rewards"

 Jokowi: However, our duty does not end today. In fact, it’s just begun. All the parts of the nation have to be united

And the last of the more than 75 comments for that day's blog post:

 KakiTiga

09 July 2014 3:56pm

I love Indonesia. Been here for nigh on 15 years, heavily invested both emotionally and physically in the country, and I'm really hoping that we can get through this election without serious political strife.
But let's remember that none of this really matters. Multinational corporations will continue to have far more sway on our lives than our elected officials and neither candidate will dare do anything serious to reduce our reliance on Indonesia's and indeed, our world's twin addictions of fossil fuels and continuous economic growth, so a significant part of this beautiful archipelago will probably be underwater within a few decades anyway.
Still; "Salam Dua Jari!"

So stay tuned, and maybe there will be a winner on July 22.  IN the mean time, there's going to be a lot of posturing, a lot of name-calling, and not much productive dialogue going on.
I think I'll stick with cocoa farming in Aceh Timur!

Last comment before (during) the election

Indonesian voters are at the polls today (since it is the 9^th in Indonesia).  Campaigning is not allowed in the days leading up to the election, and according to our men (and women) on the street, all seems quiet.  No one knows who will win.

Indonesians living abroad and more progressive Indonesians are by and large voting for Jokowi.  Prabowo is a charismatic man who is attracting the attention of younger voters who do not remember that he is responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people and is considered by many countries to be a war criminal. 

He also has been helped in his campaign by (and it makes me sick to report this) US Public Relations professionals responsible for past Republican campaigns.

There’s enough blame to go around, my friends, if he wins.

The Selling of Prabowo

Indonesia's presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto gestures as he leaves a campaign rally in Ciparay near Bandung, West Java (7/3). REUTERS/Stringer

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta 

July 5, 2014

Rob Allyn, Prabowo Subianto’s American spin doctor, has worked with politicians outside the United States before, not just in Indonesia.

Allyn helped Mexico’s Vicente Fox win the country’s top job in 2000. That year, Fox knocked off the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had been in power for 71 years.

In Indonesia today, where Prabowo is running for president against Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo, Allyn has lined up with the candidate who seems more deeply entwined with the establishment. Both the Golkar Party, which dominated Indonesia for decades under the Suharto regime and the ruling Democratic Party, have joined Prabowo’s coalition.

“I’m a businessman, not a politician,” Allyn told D Magazine in 2001.

Mexico’s constitution prohibits outsiders from engaging with the country’s "political affairs.” Hundreds of journalists and human rights observers have been expelled under the law. But that didn’t stop Allyn.

“Attuned to sensitivities in Mexico over the involvement of foreigners in the country's elections, Mr. Allyn traveled to Mexico under pseudonyms like José de Murga and Alberto Aguirre to advise Mr. Fox on polling, wardrobe and speeches,” Simon Romero wrote for The New York Times in 2005.

“Since then, Mr. Allyn has branched out to work on campaigns in other countries. He counts among his clients the Golkar Party in Indonesia; the prime minister of the Bahamas, Perry Christie; and, most recently, Dumarsais Siméus, the Haitian-born Texas millionaire who aspires to be elected president of Haiti.”

Allyn studied under Henry Kissinger at Georgetown, helped George W. Bush become governor of Texas in 1994 and consults for large corporations like Coca Cola.

He returned to work for Fox in 2005 to lobby for Mexico’s interests in the United States - and assist Fox’s protege Felipe Calderon ahead of the next election, according to Mexican media. (Calderon’s people claimed they only ever spoke to Allyn informally.)

At the time, Calderon was billing himself as honest and patriotic, but he wasn’t having much luck. So Calderon changed his tactics, launching a series of attack ads against his main rival, the popular Mexico City mayor Lopez Obrador. Calderon then surged in the polls.

Narco News, an online newspaper covering the drug war from Latin America, described Allyn’s activities: “incendiary television spots, falsified public opinion polls, and ‘reports’ based on rumor and innuendo, to sow fear and loathing into the election campaign.”

Allyn never admitted to the link with Calderon. But for many critics, the connection was clear enough. At the time, negative ads were “a new phenomenon in Mexican democracy,” Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, director of the Mexico Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in 2006. “There are fingerprints of US political electoral strategists all over [the election] because it’s not something that has traditionally been used.”

Allyn is clearly a master of his craft. The D Magazine article depicted him making his pitch to Fox, taking him and his staff through a six-hour seminar on the history of political advertising. Fox was immediately sold.

Allyn follows in the footsteps of Edward Bernays, widely regarded as “the father of public relations.” Bernays also plied his trade outside the United States. The United Fruit Company, for example, hired him to direct a disinformation campaign against Jacobo Arbenz, the Guatemalan president who tried to put through ambitious agrarian reforms in the 1950s. Arbenz was labeled a communist, and the US government intervened to overthrow him.

Joko too has been labeled a communist - not to mention a secret Christian born of Chinese-Singaporean parents - in an Indonesian race for president that has been marred by more smears than any other.

"It is very clear that this year's smear campaign against Jokowi is unprecedented in post-Suharto elections," Marcus Mietzner, a professor at Australian National University, told Tempo. "And it is equally clear that it is modeled around Republican campaigns against Democratic candidates in the US. Jokowi's depiction as a Singaporean and Christian is a direct copy of Obama's portrayal as a Kenyan and Muslim in 2008."

Daniel Lund, an Obredor pollster, elaborated on the consequences of spin doctors' actions in his country. “US political consultants at their best produce mischief,” Lund explained. “They may know how to manipulate media, but do they contribute to the good governance of a country, to the democratic maturity of a nation? I would argue no.”

http://en.tempo.co/read/news/2014/07/05/080590630/The-Selling-of-Prabowo

Wati weighs in on the debate . . .

. . . and I sense a bit of ennui in her response.

I think Jokowi, as in previous debates, gave the more specific answers, but at times he implied that pretty complex problems could be resolved quickly—which is wishful thinking.

Prabowo as usual was inconsistent with his replies. He showed again that he will use whatever it takes to win, regardless of principles.  This debate showed his real character.

Honestly, in the beginning I thought he would change and become a decisive leader. But after analyzing his statements on different issues I really don't trust him. [Phew!  I was wondering when (or if) she would say that. . . ]

How come he criticized and blamed "leakages" while at the same time he took Iocals along during his campaign? Plus he chose Hatta as his running mate? [Wati is referring to a statement made by Prabowo that all the information regarding his military dismissal and allegations of human rights violations were “press leakages” that were just designed to hurt him.  Soon after, there appeared in the local and international media a poster of Prabowo standing in front of a microphone shaking a sanitary pad at the audience, saying “I used this to clean up leakages.”  Charming. And his running mate, no stranger to controversy, is a known blabbermouth.]

How come he said SBY  [Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, current president] has successfully practiced the right type of foreign policy diplomacy when his comments on the South China Sea we so dubious? In this regards please read JP today re Marty’s remarks.

[Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said he agreed with Jokowi’s position that Indonesia was not a claimant to the natural resource-rich South China Sea territory and therefore needed to be cautious in positioning itself amid the worsening regional conflict.  Marty also “tried diplomatically to articulate his understanding of the statement of . . . Prabowo Subianto, that Indonesia was a part of the overlapping sovereignty claims.”]

How come all of a sudden he praised his former father in law [Suharto] when in the past he blamed and made statement that he has nothing in common with that family except that he was once married to one of them.

He followed the adage "the end justify the means." You know, I admired President Soeharto very much and have empathy and sympathy for his tragic life.  [meaning that he led well at first but then faltered; democracy went out the window and corruption ruled the day.  He ended up ostracized and isolated from everyone—which was sort of what he did to Sukarno before him.]  And at times like this I really feel so sad because he is being used again as political commodity by his family.

Plus ca change, my friends . . . .

Prabowo the misunderstood, Jokowi the puppet, and the game of “I’m more Muslim than You”

Monday’s mail brought this little gem, a 2009 Tentang PS blog entry in Bahasa sadly, but revealing in an interview with Probowo’s father, Prof. Sumitro, that he had close ties with the CIA when he joined the PRRI rebellion in 1950.  Makes sense, since Junior attended Army Special Forces Training at Fort Bragg, NC, in 1980.

My badly translated excerpts are as follows:

Q: Did PRRI really receive weapons  and supplies from the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ) or the U.S. Secret Service ?
A: Yes, most of them. Other weapons were purchased in Phuket, Thailand, and Taiwan. I know George Kahin ( Cornell University professor ) told me it was the CIA It is really inconsequential, though.  Many people just hate my CIA  involvement. It is true that I had contact with the CIA, but also Korean and French intelligence.

Q: Did the CIA design movement patterns for PRRI?
A. Not that far. They only helped. We had people of our own designing them. A PRRI weakness is their inclination to regard themselves as a military movement, so they are really weak in politics. Another drawback is that there are too many incoming regional interests .

* * *

Q: And after all the PRRI - and your 10 year escape/exile, you went back to Indonesia? Do Suharto ask you back ?
A: In 1966 , Suharto sent an envoy abroad to look for me. Pak Harto needed an economic advisor for Widjojo and others who were young and inexperienced. They loked everywhere for me, but to no avail. As a fugitive, I was more adept at hiding, ha - ha - ha . . . Finally, we met in Bangkok, November 1966, brought together with Sugeng Djarot, our defense attache there. I was asked back. I received the offer and returned in July 1967.

http://tentangps.blogspot.com/2009/09/prof-sumitro-djojohadikusumo-menjawab.html?m=1

The same blog also reprints AsiaWeek’s heart-wrenching 2000 story on Prabowo, entitled “I Never Betrayed My Country,” bringing up, just in time for absolution, the possibility that Probowo was not the “mastermind” behind all the genocide but just a poor patriotic general following orders. (This theme is repeated throughout his father’s 2009 interview, to wit: (“Yes, he did kidnap nine people and do a bunch of other mean things, but he was only following orders.”)

One excerpt from this article attempts to lend legitimacy to his distance from actual war crimes by citing the opinions of the press.

Now, many thinking Indonesians are acknowledging that Prabowo was perhaps the easy but not necessarily right target. Says veteran journalist Aristedes Katoppo: “He was made the fall guy for a lot of mistakes not of his making. He may have demanded things. But launching a coup? That is wrong. It’s disinformation.” Prabowo himself believes that his persecution has a reason: “There was a certain group that wanted to make me a scapegoat, maybe to hide their involvement.”

What emerges from Prabowo’s own account, coupled with this magazine’s independent inquiry, is a far different, more nuanced tale than the accepted assessment that Suharto’s fall stemmed from a battle between good and evil – and that Prabowo was the villain. This story is a report from and about the highest reaches of Indonesian politics, a revelation of its treacherously shifting nature and the complexities of its actors. It challenges what many accept about the country: its military, its former ruling family, its history. Whatever verdict you draw, it is impossible to look at the fall of Suharto in the past – or the personalities and conflicts of the present – in the same way again.

http://www-cgi.cnn.com/ASIANOW/asiaweek/magazine/2000/0303/cover1.html

So I asked Wati if there were any credibility to this report from a “veteran journalist.” How do we know unequivocally, I asked her, that Prabowo is as bad as we think he is?  Are there actual documents or confessions or evidence that name him as the person in charge when these atrocities were being committed?  This article implies that some journalists say no . . . 

And her response:

What about the journalist from Bloomberg who wrote that Jusuf Kalla [Jokowi’s running mate] is a RESPECTED figure and yet just now Kalla said that Jokowi and his candidacy got number "2" for voters to cast, and hat Megawati was so pleased.

Who exactly is the candidate nominated by the PDIP--Jokowi or Mega?  She’s still pulling the strings . . . “

This in reference to a statement Jokowi made when his slate was given the number 2, as is customary in Indonesia --you vote for a number, not names; in this case #1 is Probowo/ Hatta Radjasa, #2 is Jokowi/Kalla.  Upon receiving the number, Jokowi quoted Megawati saying, “Number 2 means Victory and peace; therefore, please vote #2.”  Prabowo protested this statement because it’s considered campaigning, which is prohibited outside the set dates for this activity.  “But the point,” says Wati, “is why did Jokowi have to quote Mega?  She should stand aside and no longer be involved directly in the race at this stage.  So no one is respectable at this point, and journalists can get led astray very easily . . . ”

Last night she added an observation:

"It’s getting really dangerous, as the issues all are now focused on who is “more Muslim." And the extremist Muslims are joining Prabowo. 

Sadly, Kalla has reacted by showing so much of his “Muslim side” that Jokowi now starts his speeches with the Arabic version of “Greetings fellow Muslims!”

Note that Soekarno and my late father wisely avoided this Arabic version of greetings. Why? Because of the fact that Indonesia is a secular state based on PANCASILA .

And Arabic is not our language nor part of our Indonesian identity. ISLAM is NOT ARABISM.

But the two candidates are too afraid to say this in public since it might endanger Muslim votes and this is where extreme Islam sees an opportunity to muzzle any secular influence  . . ."