Tom Pepinsky

Category: Research

  • Abdurrahman Wahid

    Today I met with Indonesia’s fourth President, Abdurrahman Wahid.  Indonesia’s first democratically elected president since Sukarno, "Gus Dur" was elected in 1999 and held office until he was forced out on June 23, 2001.

    Gus Dur is a fascinating character for a number of reasons, not least because he is a devout Muslim cleric and also very liberal.  His Muslim credentials are impeccable, including education at al-Azhar University in Cairo, the traditional hotbed of orthodox Islam.  He is the former head of Nahdlatul Ulama (The Revival of the Ulema), a traditionalist Muslim organization that is the largest mass organization in Indonesia.  Gus Dur’s father Wahid Hasyim was a Minister of Religion under Sukarno (and incidentally, our hotel is on Wahid Hasyim Street). 

    Our discussion involved many interesting topics, not least of them what is wrong with Indonesia now and how to make it better.  I kept finding it fascinating how tolerant and pro-diversity he is, and just how seriously he projects this image.  Our translator (whom we did not need, ha!) was the head of the Indonesian Council of Pastors.  I asked him about Pancasila, Indonesia’s old multiculturalist ideology, and he said that while the name of that ideology has been discredited by Soeharto, the spirit lives on.  Gus Dur took a huge step in improving ethnic relations in 1999 when he
    acknowedged publicly that he had some Chinese ancestry, which was
    considered a big deal at the time.  Like everyone else, Gus Dur thinks that the biggest problem facing Indonesia right now is corruption, but he thinks that morality and personal responsibility, coupled with "bravery" from the leadership, is the way to fix this.  In other words, he doesn’t think that laws and regulations alone can fix things.  He also thinks that anti-Chinese prejudice in Indonesia remains quite strong, and that its simple solution is ridding the country of economic inequality.

    These topics had little directly to do with my research, but we did talk about some other things that were useful.  Our conversation helped me to confirm some of the assumptions about ethnic relations under Soeharto and the role of political Islam in Indonesia’s democratic movement.  So in addition to being interesting, our meeting was professionally helpful.

  • Kafe Wien

    Yesterday I had a very busy day, three interviews.  It’s really amazing how much it takes out of you when you have to talk about politics for an hour and a half or so in a foreign languages, and it’s even more amazing how tired you can get after you’ve done that three times in one day.  Suffice it to say that I really slept well last night.

    My last interview was with a journalist who has great connections with the Indonesian business elite.  He also has a great Indonesian business and politics blog.  We had a very nice time discussing all sorts of things related to corruption and cronyism during Soeharto’s time and these days now, and discussing the types of reforms that have been successful and the types that have not.  A wonderful conversation, very useful for my research, full of insights.  The guy has contacts everywhere, and we discussed some of the more interesting shenanigans of Soeharto and his cronies both during the crisis and after Soeharto’s resignation.  Helps to explain why Soeharto is still a free man, and why Soeharto’s son Tommy was only sent to jail after he arranged for a judge to be murdered.  (Tommy, by the way, got out of jail a couple days ago because his tummy hurts.)

    Our meeting was at Plaza Senayan, a very very upscale mall.  Malls in Indonesia, as we’ve discussed before, are really the center of all glamorous living.  It seems weird, but it’s true.  Tommy Hilfiger, the Body Shop, Ermenegildo Zegna, all were there.  We met at the fanciest restaurant at Plaza Senayan, Kafe Wien, a mock-Viennese cafe.  Seeing all of the waitresses in their dirndls was certainly the high point of my day, although it caused some weird cross-cultural mental interference remembering the time I spent in Austria while I was in high school.  The coffee was delicious, the clientele was very wealthy, and they even had a string quartet playing Mozart.  But like good Indonesians, the reporter and I ordered sop buntut instead of wienerschnitzel, and it was great.

    As an added surprise, I was walking through the Freedom Institute today and ran into an old friend, a PhD student in history at the University of Wisconsin but originally from Sumba and currently living in Jakarta.  Great to see him, and he’ll me and James around to see good stuff this weekend.