Tom Pepinsky

Category: Politics

  • Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

    My meeting at the US Embassy was very interesting indeed.  The embassy is no more secure than the one in Kuala Lumpur, although it is a LOT bigger.  The USAID compound within the embassy along is probably the size of the entire embassy in Kuala Lumpur.  Anyway, when you arrive you have to turn off your phone and leave it at the front desk, along with any sort of electronic devices like an Ipod or a laptop.  That’s annoying.  I accidentally left my notebook in my laptop bag at the front counter, and they had to send a special runner to the security checkpoint to get it.  What a pain.  Most of the people who work in the embassy are actually Indonesians with security clearance.  Everyone was extremely nice, even the five dozen guards with submachine guns and an APC (really) parked on the street in front of the embassy.  The head guard was the first Indonesian I ever met who was clearly Portuguese…his name was Raoul Endarnho, and his last name seems to be a Portuguese version of what looks to be a Timorese root (endar).  Most people with Portuguese last names in Indonesia are Timorese, but most of them live in East Timor, the country that broke off from Indonesia in 1999 after 25 years of Indonesian colonial rule.

    So what I discussed with USAID officials yesterday was the progress of economic reforms in Indonesia since the fall of Soeharto in 1998.  My dissertation focuses on events leading up to Soeharto’s resignation, but I’m also interested in post-Soeharto economic reforms for another project.  The USAID folks claim that there were hardly any real reforms at all in areas like corporate governance, macroeconomic management, and political corruption before the election of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2004.  But now, they say that the changes are real, and they heartily support his efforts to raise gasoline and electricity prices, to implement sensible macro policies, and to reform Indonesia’s rampantly corrupt business/politics nexus.  They see signs of success.

    Which is funny because a number of other people that I’ve met are far less sanguine about reforms.  Many people talk about reforms in name that have not been matched by reforms on the ground.  Lots of corrupt officials get hauled before the courts, but very few are convicted, and the ones who are happen to be the most outrageously corrupt ones with strong Soeharto connections.  I wonder how much it is the US government’s policy to be positive or optimistic at all times.  I guess I’ll have to see what other folks think about these reforms.

  • Cap Naga

    Hmm, funny words, only two of them, must be a recipe, right?  It’s not.  I (TP) have come across this term a couple times over the past couple of months when reading about the reformasi (reform) movement in Malaysia after the sacking of then-Deputy PM Anwar Ibrahim.  Anwar’s wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, ended up heading the National JUSTice Party (KeADILan) after Anwar was arrested and jailed for sodomy and corruption.

    So what about this term.  It’s funny because it’s one of those terms that you think that you are misunderstanding when you first read or hear it.  It translates as "dragon brand" or "dragon stamp".  Now, when you’re in this part of the world you learn pretty quickly that "dragon" is a codeword for Chinese.  So I was sure that I was misunderstanding when I encountered this term being used to describe Wan Azizah.  As the elections right after Anwar’s sacking approached, a number of Malay politicians remarked that Wan Azizah was not a suitable leader for Malays because she is cap naga.  What could they be talking about?

    Well, it turns out that Wan Azizah has some Chinese ancestry.  OK, but that’s weird: in Malaysia, by law, the definition of a Malay is someone who follows Malay customs and is a Muslim.  Wan Azizah certainly falls into that category, and there is precisely no legal provision for genetic requirements for Malayness.  Once I met a guy, Tan Sri Noordin Sopiee, who was certainly Malay but very openly was proud that he had very little Malay ancestry (here’s a picture).  No one disputes that he’s a Malay.  In fact, this accusation against Wan Azizah is quite shocking; JM and I have never heard or read about anyone seriously disputing whether or not anyone was a Malay based on appearance or ancestry.  In fact, the newspapers here occasionally run stories of saudara baru (literally, "new siblings"), usually Chinese Malaysians who have converted to Islam and "become Malay".  This accusation against Wan Azizah is the lowest of the low blows that we can think of in Malaysian politics (and anyway, check out her picture).

    I looked up cap naga on Google, and the only hits I found were articles about these accusations against Wan Azizah and products by a company named Cap Naga that sells Chinese herbal concoctions in Malaysia and Indonesia.  This suggests that either the term was created for Wan Azizah, or (more likely) that it’s a term that you rarely hear out in the open.

    At any rate, this is a nice additional commentary on politics and ethnicity in Malaysia.  Everybody knows that everyone is supposed to fall neatly into one of the ethnic categories that the government perpetuates, and everybody also knows that these categories are sort of fake, but everyone has to act as if these categories have objective bases in reality.  And the government can try to marginalize you by taking away your ethnic affiliation.