Comments

I suppose when the context is the raise of radical conservatives, I think it happens everywhere else in the world. Trump’s victory in USA, Brexit, they are cases in point, and perhaps similar analysis can be done in the case of Indonesia’s muslim-pribumi conservatives movement (‘alt-right’?). I think Jokowi is trying to handle it ‘his way’ by keep on promoting what he said as traditional values such as unity in diversity, silaturahmi/hospitality, tolerance, ‘majority protect minority – minority respect majority’ speeches. Having intelligent debates with the alt-right will usually hit the wall and not really effective. When their lack of rationale is exposed, it will just make them angrier.

Amazing how partisan the comments are here. The article isn’t partisan. The writer seeks to comprehend what has happened and understand what it means.

New Mandala is meant to be a forum for discussion, and while point-scoring is part of that, the dyed-in-the-wool Jokowi lobby should “ambil hikmahnya” before they ‘buzz’ and spin one of the biggest rallies in Indonesian history.

I wrote a piece along with Andre Barahamin on the rally (which I attended): http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Indonesian-hard-line-Islamist-groups-flex-their-muscles

Like Hikam, I think understanding this event is essential. One million people came out and sent a message to the political establishment. No parpol could mobilise such a large number of people. NU’s bluff was basically called by MUI. That in itself is significant. Muhammadiyah has subsequently condoned the rally.

There is immense discomfort and confusion with what is happening amongst political party elites and the security services. A massive amount of political recalibration occurred last Friday. Simply coming back with “Jokowi melawan anarkis” misses the point entirely.

At the rally Jokowi didn’t give a rousing speech. He was hemmed in by Gen. Gator and Menkopolhukam Wiranto, didn’t electrify the crowd, and had to walk back through a huge crowd of people screaming “Tangkap Ahok”. Rizieq led the chanting.

A huge shift occurred in Indonesian politics last Friday. Anyone refusing to accept that is living in a fantasy world.

While Buddhists aren’t killing Muslims nationwide, they have been systematically persecuting them for decades – in Yangon and elsewhere.

PS- my memory did sot serve me at all. The gen is a member of the queens tigers faction. So many generals to keep track of I got them mixed up. My apologies.

The author of this post greatly understates the harm that foreign intervention caused in the Middle East over the last decade or so. He points to Jordan and Tunisia as beacons of stability without mentioning that neither country was subjected to regime change intervention. Ironically, he is therefore right in asserting that Asia has more to learn from the Middle East than vice versa, and that lesson is not to tolerate foreign intervention aimed at regime change.

But it was much easier for Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron to attack a country like Libya than it would be for their successors to attack a Southeast Asian country.

The author suggests that the Middle East is ‘beset by a tangled mess of repression, radicalism and violence emanating from the failed uprising of the Arab Spring’. And how might one describe the Middle East before those uprisings? Well, it was a tangled mess of repression, radicalism and violence. Hafez al-Assad, Ben Ali, Saddam Hussein, the Saudi monarchs and the leaders of the Persian Gulf emirates, Gaddafi and the rulers of Sudan were all repressive authoritarians.

The violence of the Middle East has been quantifiable easily by counting the number of political assassinations (including a president of Egypt, a king of Saudi Arabia, a king of Iraq and his prime minister, a king of Jordan and no doubt others who don’t come immediately to mind). Gaddafi himself was murdered, as Libyans took care to obey Hillary Clinton’s instruction to ‘capture him or kill him’. That murder allowed her to utter the imperishable words that poet laureates of imperial power would have been proud to compose, ‘We came, we saw, he died’.

As Chris Beale writes cogently, it is just silly to compare the Middle East with Southeast Asia.

Bridget Welsh is known to be pro-opposition. Her view does not touch on the reality of the Malaysian society. What she is not saying is that the opposition also is using the hate and racial politics.

What I wrote was obviously my opinion. So you think Rizieq Shihab was the one who achieved victory in 212 event? I’m curious of your reasoning if you do. Still no anarchy in an event that involved hundreds of thousands of people is obviously a victory. Who’s victory is debatable, but the whole nation benefits because there was no anarchy.

Obviously people come to 212 event for their own reason (most of them because they want to see Ahok incarcerated). Whatever anyone said won’t change that. But the message Jokowi sent was clear: about Ahok, the matter is settled, wait until the legal process is finished, I won’t hear any other demand concerning this, I won’t justified your action by mentioning anything about this because I have made myself clear on this matter.

Obviously Mr Hikam knows a whole lot about Javanese people as he was born in Java. But his writing here takes a westernised point of view, not Javanese point of view. I wrote the last part for any other western people who might read this article.

OPINION TODAY’S EDITORIAL
We need a clearer definition of lese majeste
December 07, 2016 01:00
By The Nation

Blurred line on royal defamation is preventing national debate vital to the Kingdom’s progress

Over the weekend, the police arrested a pro-democracy student activist and charged him with insulting the monarchy after he shared a BBC article about King Maha Vajiralongkorn .

The article was posted on the British broadcaster’s Thai-language Facebook page.

The arresting officer said the article violated the country’s lese majeste law, prompting the first arrest for royal defamation since the new King ascended the throne last Thursday.

Jatupat Boonpattararaksa, a law student, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted on the charge.

Jutapat, a member of the outspoken pro-democracy Dao Din student organisation, was arrested in the Northeast province of Chaiyaphum while attending a religious ceremony. The group has held a series of public protests against the military-led government. Needless to say, there isn’t much love for its members among their target, the junta.

The arresting officer and his team appear to have acted on their own discretion in judging that Jutapat’s conduct violated the law.

However, it is not clear why he was singled out for arrest when others had previously shared the same article. Could it be that the police also took into account his past criticism of the ruling junta?

Their action also raised another more important and more difficult question: what, precisely, constitutes an insult to the monarchy?

For years, governments have used Article 112, better known as the lese majeste law, to silence political dissidents and to further their own agendas.

The law is readily exploited in this way because no one can say where the line of is drawn. Then-Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya tried to disperse the damaging confusion in 2010 when he told an audience at Johns Hopkins University that Thailand needed to debate the evolution of the monarchy.

“I think we have to talk about the institution of the monarchy,” Kasit said.

“How it has to reform itself in the modern globalised world … Just like what the British, Dutch, Danish or Liechtenstein monarchies have gone through to adjust themselves to the modern world.”

Opposition politicians in Thaksin Shinawatra’s camp pounced on that statement, but then made little headway in their attempts to damage Kasit’s standing.

Broaching this taboo subject can cost a politician or bureaucrat their career, since those responsible for enforcing the law feel compelled to act quickly.

The mystery in Jutapat’s case, then, is why police only acted several days after the allegedly defamatory post had been shared.

Meanwhile, if sharing the post violated the lese majeste law, then the content must also be problematic.

Will the police involved in the arrest now be charged with negligence for not flagging up the original BBC report?

The point here is that when it comes to lese majeste, nobody seems to know the standard operating procedure or where the red line lies. Since assuming power after the coup, the military-led government has gone after lese majeste suspects with all its might, thus lowering the threshold of the law.

The junta has little legitimacy in terms of a democratic mandate but sees claims authority as the defender of the revered institution. It also claims that the coup was launched in order to launch much-needed reform that would strengthen democratic institutions and process. The generals’ talk of reform has since been replaced by a discourse of law, order and stability, and defending the institution of the monarchy is part of that initiative.

In this globalised and Web-connected world, it is virtually impossible to prevent anybody from sharing article deemed defamatory or otherwise illegal. Given that cold reality, we need to come up with a clear definition of what constitutes lese majeste.

As it stands, the law can be exploited by any person, using their personal and flawed judgement, to claim an action or statement defames the monarchy regardless of its context. And when it comes to such a sensitive issue, one’s judgement can always be cloudy.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/news/opinion/today_editorial/30301567

I am interested to see how the Habib case (insulting Pancasila, the state pillar and symbol) will be handled.

Thanks for the clarification and my apologies for the careless reference!