🇮🇩 How did spry Sandi get bodied?
🇮🇩 How did spry Sandi get bodied?
Naughty Rommy and never forget the rice
Hello friends!
This is a bit slower this week than I’d like to be but I swear I have a good excuse! I’m in Bangkok for Thailand’s election! I’ll have a Dari Mulut ke Mulut special primer about it tomorrow which will be free for everyone, so if you’re not subscribed there do it right now.
Thanks,
Erin Cook (click the link, I have a new site)
This week on Indonesia dll, Hayat and I crack into the debate (blah) and the arrest of PPP (now former) chair Romahurmuziy — better known as Rommy — on corruption charges. Hayat is really interesting to talk to on this because he sees political corruption as an almost generational thing. Will change slowly be coming? Probably, but this case is likely to spin PPP out to the wilderness so they might not be there to see it.
We also touch on Egg Boy, during which I totally forgot to talk about how Indonesia and Malaysia went wild for him online. We’re on Soundcloud here as well as any of your fave podcast apps and Spotify.
As Hayat and I mentioned on the show, the best read to come out of the debate is certainly Erwida Maulia at NAR. She notes that while a win by Sandi had been widely predicted, in the end Sandi appeared to err on the side of caution lest he come across as attacking an older, respected member of the ulema. Ma’ruf played his role perfectly by threading many answers with religious instruction even when it was probably super unhelpful. Burhanuddin Muhtadi’s point that Sandi has become overexposed is very true — and his own fault! If he were Taylor Swift he’d go dormant for a year, but he can’t afford to so where to from here?
This from the Conversation was published last month, but I only came across it this week. Just what I needed! Why is Indonesia so particularly obsessed with rice self-sufficiency? Given it’s not the only country which net imports and it certainly isn’t the only one whose cuisine demands rice served for a dish to be considered a meal, how did it become the outlier? Jamie Davidson from NUS looks at the long history of why. Both Prabowo and Jokowi have talked about it and I’d expect Prabowo to continue getting some jabs in on this front as the campaign ramps up.
The General Elections Commission (KPU) is looking for a 77.5 percent turn out next month and has been hard at work with education campaigns across the country. Turn out in 2014 fell just short of 70 percent so I think this perhaps an overly ambitious, but still admirable!, figure. We’ll talk more about golput in the next few weeks on Indonesia dll and I’d expect there to be loads of more traditional coverage on it as the movement picks up pace.
Tom Lembong, chairman of the Investment Coordinating Board, says investors will bail on Indonesia if Jokowi isn’t returned. It’s important, firstly, to note Lembong is a former trade minister under Jokowi and I’m nearly certain they’re very, very tight. Still, it’s an interesting point. “If there was an election surprise, I think the markets will crash. The currency will probably crash,” Lembong told Bloomberg. Given how stressed the rupiah has been, will this play against Prabowo? Probably not, but be aware. This piece includes a line about Brexit polling which I’m a real pedant about so just indulge me: polling before Brexit was tight and showed Brexit was certainly possible it was not a US 2016 or Malaysia last year outlier.