Tom Pepinsky

Author: tompepinsky

  • Who Like Many Indonesians Uses Only One Name

    SBY has chosen his running mate, the Governor of Bank Indonesia, Boediono. Who, I hasten to add in the style of the American press, "like many Indonesians uses only one name." I guess we can get used to this phrase because we're going to see a lot of it in the future, assuming current predictions of an easy victory for the incumbent hold true.

    SBY-Boediono

    5-16-09.1

    Boediono is a solid pick. SBY is pretty popular no matter whom he
    chooses as a running mate, so he doesn't need to use his VP to shore up any
    type of political support from any particular group. So he's picked a technocrat
    with a great reputation for clean and capable macroeconomic management.
    This is precisely what a large developing country needs facing a global
    economy such as this one. I have good sources that tell me that when
    SBY first contacted Boediono about the job, Boediono's response was
    "well, I'm worried about whether or not we can find someone responsible
    to run Bank Indonesia." SBY ate that right up.

    The other parties are screaming now that Boediono is a "neoliberal" and
    that he "doesn't represent Muslims." These are weak complaints.
    Boediono is a neoliberal, but he's not an ideologue. His supporters say
    that he's careful and attentive to the differences between textbook
    macroeconomics and real world conditions. And to the extent that he is a neoliberal, that just might be a good thing. The complaint that he doesn't represent Muslims is even sillier. At the end of the day, the four Islamic-affiliated parties that support SBY (they hoped that this would give them a VP pick, and accordingly were the ones fussing about no Muslim representation) have all now fallen into line behind SBY-Boediono.

    The other two official tickets are Megawati Sukarnoputri and Prabowo Subianto (PDI-P and Gerindra) and Jusuf Kalla and Wiranto (Golkar and Hanura). I have fewer positive things to say about these two tickets. I don't trust Mega to govern well, Kalla to govern cleanly, or Prabowo or Wiranto to uphold the rule of law.

    Mega and Prabowo, Wiranto and Kalla

    5-16-09.2

     

    Here's another press mention of Thursday's research presentation. I should note that if this author were my student, I would report him for a violation of academic integrity for improper use of quotation marks. The author also seems to miss completely the point of our research, misinterpreting both the findings and our interpretation of them.

  • Presentation

    Yesterday I did a presentation at the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) for researchers, activists, and the press. (Here is the announcement.) This was a first for me in three ways: (1) a research presentation conducted entirely in Indonesian, (2) a research presentation conducted in front of the press, and (3) a research presentation conducted in front of people who had a large stake in the research itself.

    I wanted to find a picture of myself taken by the press, but I can't seem to find one. Photogenic I am not. So what I tried to do was to take a picture of the press from my perspective, looking out onto them. Unfortunately I could only do it really quickly after it was announced that we'd break for lunch, so you can imagine the consequences.

    Lunch Buffet! Everybody Up!

    5-15-09

    I can, though, find some media coverage of what was discussed. The English one I actually discovered while reading the print version of this newspaper over breakfast. The Indonesian one features the worst butchering of my last of all time.

    Actually, I think that although my presentation went well, my coauthor Saiful Mujani stole the show. The results of his latest public opinion surveys show some truly important things about the role of ethnicity, religion, and other "primordial" identities in the recent and upcoming elections. We hear a lot of chatter among the commentariat here that Indonesian voters want a diverse presidential ticket, one that has a nationalist candidate and an "Islamic" candidate, or one with a Javanese and a non-Javanese. Turns out, there's just no evidence that this is true. The upcoming presidential elections look like they'll feature a ticket of two ethnic Javanese from nationalist/neoliberal backgrounds running against a ticket headlined by an ethnic Bugis businessman with Muslim credentials (Jusuf Kalla) and a nationalist ethnic Javanese (Wiranto) and perhaps one more ticket to be named later. The double-Javanese nationalist ticket is the most popular by far. And critically, it is supported at the same rate by Muslims and Christians, ethnic Javanese and non-Javanese, Java-Bali and outer island voters. My guess is that the same people trying to clamour for an Islamic candidate or a non-Javanese candidate are simply representing the parties who see this as the only way that they can get any political influence.

    Saiful puts it like this, borrowing from Nietzsche: Politik aliran sudah mati. Rakyat sendiri yang membunuhnya. Or translated loosely, "Identity politics is dead. The people themselves have killed it."