What used to be the famous flower market across from Mahakam lab and pharmacy is looking to be a really nice public park. Let’s hope it stays clean, well maintained and open.

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Which autobot is this, anyone know

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See and download the full gallery on posterous

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This whole election thing reminds me of the time I went to Kemang Food Fest. 

Kemang Food Fest is in essence a food court with a cornucopia of selections to choose from. Some of the tenants are well known while others are no-name outlets. So one night I was there with some friends and got ourselves an empty table. We chatted a bit and wanted to check out what kind of food they got there. The next scene is probably best described as something out of a National Geographic documentary where a swarm of vultures swooped in and started pecking at what looked like a carcass. Seriously. 

What happened was instead of one of us getting up and checking out the stalls, this army of menu-wielding busboys descended on our table and quite literally started dropping their menus in front of our faces one after another. Some of them went back and picked up their menu to put the blasted thing on the top of the pile, thinking we would choose theirs over the others’, which of course started a chain of douche bags doing the same thing over and over until I shouted out of frustration and nearly threw all the menus of the table. Sure, they all were offended but not nearly as I was. We could have just walked away and go to another place but we were hungry, it was late, it was another laundry bag that we just didn’t want to deal with so we stuck with it and picked out five random menus to choose from. Have you ever had to choose from five different books of menu  in one sitting? I thought one menu was more than enough to keep a man starving for another 10-15 minutes while he tries to figure out what to eat (talk about torture). No, here’s five more. And that was culled from about 30.

Hey, whaddaya know, there’s about 30 different parties to choose from in the next election. Maybe they all had dinner at Kemang Food Fest?

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So here we are, less than six months before the Indonesian general election. Really, less than six months to go? Whoa hold on a minute, when is it anyway? April 2009. Really? Yep. it’s not too long now, doesn’t feel like it eh? So what are you going to do about it? I’m gonna vaguely talk about it in not so many details. Skip to the end of this piece for the TL;DR version.

I’m not much of a pundit on the Indonesian political scene but like any other asshole out there I’ve got an opinion because it’s really easy to have one.

What’s going on?
Let’s be honest, outside the political circle and people who have got no better things to do, who knows about Indonesian politics? Seriously, honestly. Without googling or looking up references, can you tell me how many political parties will participate in the next legislative election? No, really, because I don’t but I know it’s more than 30 and less than 40, which is a lot more than the last election. The abundance of choice really doesn’t give you any. You end up going back to the few you’re familiar with, don’t you?

Do you know what political platforms and policies that each of those 30+ parties will carry and implement? Based on the last election, it doesn’t seem to matter does it because there will not be a majority winner (it’s really unlikely–from 1 to 10, it’s 15) and no one can form a government without a coalition and  a shitload of compromise. Here’s a simpler question, who won the legislative election last time? No? Let me give you a hint, they were in power for over 30 years. No I’m not shittin’ you, it’s them.

So whaddaya think? Of the last five years of course! Of the government! Me, the only thing I can think of is they made good progress in bringing back the trillions that people stole from state. They can’t do too much else though because they were busy trying to fix themselves. The fact that we have an effectively unicameral multi-party system doesn’t seem to be helping the matters. Nobody is keeping them in check and nobody seems to have the interest of the people in mind. What they do is serve the interest of not only themselves but those of the loudest voice, which doesn’t necessarily mean the popular voice. It’s the whole squeaky wheel and grease thing.

What do you know?
With the elections coming soon, do we know who the candidates are? Do we know the platform upon which they make their decisions? Do we know their policies and personal stance on local and national issues? What about their past associations? Too difficult? How about this, do you even know  who is running for your local electorate? Or how about your current legislative rep? I bet you don’t. Not only don’t you know, but you very likely not care at all because hardly any of them ever made themselves known to their electorates outside the campaign period. We don’t even know if they’re doing their jobs, which probably means it’s a sign they need to be replaced. Heh.

I think it says something about the Indonesian election that many of us are more familiar and excited, even, with US politics. I remember Barack Obama’s first major international appearance at the Democratic Convention back in 2004 endorsing John Kerry for POTUS and the excitement that surrounded him, especially the speculation that he would be running for presidency in the near future and possibly against Hillary Clinton. I was thinking 2012, but he ended up winning last month.

With his endorsement speech, he laid down his platform even though it wasn’t until two years later that he declared his intention to run as a presidential candidate. Obama’s election victory was at least four years in the making. Six months before the US election we knew who the candidates were. We knew Clinton was finished. We knew it was Obama vs McCain. We knew their policies and we knew their platforms. Six months before the Indonesian presidential election, do we know who the candidates are? The run offs have not even started. We don’t know where each party stand and who they endorse. With under six months to go, even the incumbents have not began campaigning. The president hasn’t even garnered significant explicit support from parties other than his own. Okay, I guess it’s not fair to compare a country with over 200 years of solid democratic history to another with less than a dozen and being dragged kicking and screaming at that.

And therein lies the key. With less than 12 years of experience, many of the parties haven’t learned how to run a successful campaign in a democracy and many of the parties in this coming election did not exist at the time of the last election. They think copying Obama’s internet strategy is the key to victory. Obama’s key to victory is not the internet, it was just another medium. Obama won because he managed to appear upfront, detailed, and sincere on his policies, not to mention confident. His ideas resonated with the majority of Americans, and clearly the rest of the world.

What do I know?
And as for Indonesia’s own elections, I haven’t got a clue what’s going on, who to vote for and why. They all say, “Vote for me! I’ll bring you a better Indonesia!”. But nobody has said how.

What I know is, we’re going to have one hell of a massively humongous ballot papers, probably the largest in the world. It’s going to be like opening a newspaper in the voting booth. Get ready for it.

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