Yeah nothing new and foreign countries leaders will keep on saying that Indonesia is the beacon of religious tolerance for muslim majority countries despite majority of the people are not allowed (by the holy book and clerics) to vote for a kuffar.
And by the way can you imagine the uproar if Trump says a muslim can not be elected/appointed as leader in any govermental posts in the US no matter how good and loyal to the country he/she is.
You don’t have to be a fatalistic Marxist to see that factors are conspiring to create a crisis of structural proportions. The facile attempts by Prayuth of playing-off the Chinese against the Americans and vice-versa have been instructive only in so far as they demonstrate conclusively that unlike say General Zia, the man really is completely out of his depth. His bumbling attempts at steering the ship in relatively calm waters strongly suggest that when (not if) a real crisis comes, management let resolution will be utterly beyond his ken.
I agree, the ruling elite/s seem woefully unprepared to meet the challenge, other than to call back the ‘man from yonder’. With more and more Thais (literally) having sold the family farm to grab themselves a slice of that Western, consumerist lifestyle, more and more of them become little more than urban serfs, utterly dependent on that monthly salary. The shock-absorber that was the rural economy is fast disappearing and with no sign of land reform on the horizon the tolerances within the system are getting tighter and tighter. Lose your job and that’s you on the breadline, and the bank will soon relieve you of the keys to that nice fancy 4×4 and the new-build house it’s garaged-in. With little or no social safety-net there’s a very long way to fall in this country.
On the up, Thailand has been a big open-air experiment in modernity, take away 7, 8, 9% growth p.a. and substitute close to 0% and what you end up with is an explosion in both private debt and graduate unemployment/under-employment – precision caps if there ever were.
Folks of infinitely greater ability than the current ‘PM’ would have their work cut-out for them in these circumstances, suggesting perhaps that ignorance truly is bliss.
A Thai – I agree “allow the King some time”. But it would help if he gave some indication of being like the early Spain’s King Juan Carlos. This would STRENGTHEN the Monarchy. As for Pavin – nobody becomes a senior academic at highly prestigious Kyoto University, unless they are extremely well qualified.
In Indonesia, the Pribumi Muslim elite have used anti-Chinese sentiment largely to benefit themselves, that is nothing new.
The data would have been better if it had ethnicity. I think the reason why the poor and less educated Muslims were more likely to be satisfied by Ahok’s performance is because the Javanese make up a greater % of the poor in Jakarta than among rich Muslims.
To get a better sense of what is going on you have to look at the 1st round results. Anies didn’t do as well in poor neighborhoods, with most of the support going to Agus and Ahok. Its only in the second round did those poor Agus supporters reluctantly vote for Anies. Anies is NOT a poor man’s candidate He might want to believe he is, but he is not.
The other question is why didn’t poor and less educated non-Muslims feel any antipathy towards Ahok? It seems that anti-Chinese bigotry is largely Muslim now.
This article on NM so disrespect to King. Allow the new King some time and he is great. Pavin is not serious for academic. He is a joke for all real Thais in Thailand. No body takes this fake scholarship for serious. So sad that NM sinks this far. Pavin knows that this is not worthy. any evidence? None of course.
R.N.: You appear to have missed the two paragraphs where two decades of “squatter” involvement with activists and in negotiations with the “responsible officials” are credited with having led to “new political practices and identities” among the residents.
It’s difficult to square that with your imagined dupe. But I see again and again on this site that it is difficult for many foreigners to come to terms with the agency of Thai citizens, preferring instead to create these images of easily fooled and not very bright victims.
It is a topic worthy of investigation in my opinion.
I think it was different here. Polls were showing after the First round, that Ahok was polling such about this level. So they had no problem declaring their support for Anies-Sandi. It was only during the last 1-2 weeks some polls were showing the tightening.
Trump isn’t a good comparison, because Trump still lost by a wide margin on the popular vote, which shows the polling was accurate at the national level. Trump won by thin margins in the Midwest.
As with Pauline Hanson and Le Pen polling results reflected in votes, there was o discrepancy. Pauline Hanson under perform what the polling was saying in the election.
This is very interesting and we must ‘take our hats off’ to the Dutch government for their transparency into the issues that trouble societies that have been troubled with an unknown,unclear past.
Malaysia, like wise should have an Independent Commission set up to inquire into UMNO (Alliance) participation in triggering racial riots in 1969, May 13, There is abundant evidence that the Malay community were fed up with the Malay elite’s control of the economic pie and started to revolt.
The opposition party’s success in the 1969 election was unacceptable to the ruling Malay government. The Chief Minister of Selangor-Harun, instigated the Malay community to riot which lead to the slaughter of Malay,Chinese and Indian community. Hundreds, if not thousands died-and this is a BIG SECRET till today. A racial religious war was triggered to avert a Malay class war. We can see the threats today coming from UMNO’s Najib Regime.
We need to know what happened on 13th May 1969 -its causes etc.
Great use of available data, but something that minorities already know: Indonesian muslims are increasingly fundamentalist and intolerant. From the Friday sermons at periphery (lurahnya, camatnya, rektornya, copetnya harus muslim!); the lack of other newspapers except Republika in some campuses; salon muslimah only (who does you hair determines akhirat?); virginity test; LGBT test; the various 1212, 0303, 0505; overwhelming resources toward islamic religious activities in public schools; etc all lead to (another) upsurge of the desire for negara islam. The so-caled complexity is over rated, and sometimes one can not help but see it as a romanticized idea of Indonesia: “the Indonesian culture, which is soft-spoken and very respectful” – gimme a break. Go into any pasar and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone like that.
[The more interesting story would be how the minorities strive on, like Ahok, that lady lurah, some gay/lesbian entrepreneurs, etc, and thrive despite the constraint of an increasingly close-minded society].
An aspect of this problem that hasn’t arisen in this discussion is the imperfect and now stalled transition to the rule of law in Thailand. The process of informal occupation of railway land probably goes something like this: someone puts up a shack on railway land; he is reminded of the fact that he is on railway land by the “responsible” official, but instead of enforcing it, the official turns a blind eye to the law, and begins charging the occupier an informal rent which the official puts in his own pocket. When he is finally evicted, the “tenant” feels, with a certain amount of justification, that his rights have been trampled on. After all, he has been told all his life as a Thai subject, that the law is what officials say it is.
It’s funny to see how Western researchers would love to point finger at Ne Win and the military for all Burma’s ills but ignore the elephant in the room: the British colonization. The concept of taingyintha was created due to animosity toward the deep inequality between British-favored races (Indians and Chinese who held vast portions of the country’s wealth) and the native population. After independence, most of the businesses were owned either by Indians or the Chinese due to deliberate British policies to exclude Burmans. Ne Win and many nationalists loathed this situation and taingyintha was created as a part of the solution to this problem.
Rohingyas were among the least of Ne Win’s concerns in his times for an administration beset with communist and ethnic rebels as well as the Cold War. Myanmarification was seen as an easy solution to the divisions and rebellions left behind by the British. i.e. “Hey, if you belong to an ethnic group or are a Bamar, you belong to the country and stop fighting to build your own.”
Talking about colonialism today would invite diehard apologists to argue “Hey, it’s 70 years ago, stop blaming us and start building your own country!” Yet nobody would say, “Hey, Holocaust was 70 years ago, and just forget about it and move on.” Integration has never been a problem for Chinese and Indians as they can say both groups have been in Myanmar since Anawrahta. It shouldn’t be a problem for Rohingyas too if they just mingle themselves as Indians. But the problem begins when you start saying “This is our land. We have been here since the world begins. All Arakanese kings were Muslims.” etc. etc.
So, Rohingya issue will never be resolved. Once the Western involvement has begun, there has never been an issue resolved quickly. Two sides will fight on and diverge, with all their name-calling and victim playing. For example, Myanmar democratization, which could have taken place as early as 1991, took additional 20 years under Western “intervention.” So keep fighting, while I take a back seat and observe the games being played.
I think the author fails to mention the following:
First, Prabowo’s strategy isn’t risk free. If it was as easy as going hard right, why not just don’t a ISIS robe and declare Sharia. The closer Prabowo moves to the right, the more likely he is going to perform poorly with the Javanese. Giving front and center stage to FPI, will certainly get NU and Muhammadiyah all riled up in East/Central Java. And if you think what mosque did was bad in Jakarta to Ahok, I can’t even imagine what NU/Mihammadiyah mosque / pesentran will do to Prabowo in 2019, if they fear that Habib becomes Religious Affairs Minister.. If one side can play dirty, the other side can too. Some towns in East/Central Java have already banned the FPI.
Secondly, the author mentioned in his video about Anies running as VP, or even running for President. Anies has almost no base outside of Jakarta. and the suburbs of West Java. Prabowo barely lost to Jokowi in Jakarta in 2014. However, nation wide his path to victory is narrow. especially If Jokowi puts a Muslim Sumatran or Sundanese, then Prabowo is in trouble.
Thirdly, there is a West Java election in 2018, if PKS loses in West Java, Prabowo is going to be in trouble. PKS is particularly weak now because of high unemployment and slow economic growth. Its unemployment rate is double that of Central Java, East Java and Jakarta. It has slipped from having the 12 highest per capita income in Indonesia since 2005, to 22th as of 2015.
The 4th factor is Anies performance. Anies has about a year to show that he can do the job. All it takes is a bad rainy season, sanitation worker not showing up for work, because the bureaucrats are docking their salaries like before, squatters moving back into places like Pluit and Kalijodo, then Prabowo is going to have a tough time convincing people he can actually do the job. In 2014 and 2017, Prabowo and Anies ran a campaign where they can make outrageous promises, once people realize they can’t fullfil them, then people aren’t going to trust them.
There is very little discussion in the New Mandala about what Jokowi/Ahok did and how they managed to do it. As some who worked as a consultant in the Department of Public Works (PU) in the mid 1990s, and followed Ahok videos on occasion, Ahok’s conceptual framework for Jakarta is just follow 40-50 years of master plans that donor money has paid for, that has been poorly implement or not at all.
Western academics might think this developmentalist approach is deeply flawed. But Jakarta has faced 40 years of neglect. Western tax payers have poured hundreds of millions in studies pertaining to many issues in Jakarta over the last 40 years. For once we had a Governor who actually read some of them, and implement those suggestions
Anies programs aren’t backed by 40-50 years of best minds in both Indonesia and the donor community, its something he pulled from thin air during the campaign. Anies response to a problem is to have conferences and discussions, it just repeats what the Jakarta government has been doing for 40 years before Ahok/Jokowi.
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Kingdom of fear (and favour)
I don’t understand why such comments are posted by NM. What’s the point of moderation?
Despotic urbanism in Thailand
If you want to successfully challenge an official in Thailand, you have to scrape together more power than he has. The law is a sham.
‘Bottom up’ campaigning failed Ahok, and it might fail Jokowi.
Yeah nothing new and foreign countries leaders will keep on saying that Indonesia is the beacon of religious tolerance for muslim majority countries despite majority of the people are not allowed (by the holy book and clerics) to vote for a kuffar.
And by the way can you imagine the uproar if Trump says a muslim can not be elected/appointed as leader in any govermental posts in the US no matter how good and loyal to the country he/she is.
Ahok’s satisfied non-voters: an anatomy
Very well said
R.I.P orange bajaj
[…] from an article in the New Mandala […]
Despotic urbanism in Thailand
Well said.
You don’t have to be a fatalistic Marxist to see that factors are conspiring to create a crisis of structural proportions. The facile attempts by Prayuth of playing-off the Chinese against the Americans and vice-versa have been instructive only in so far as they demonstrate conclusively that unlike say General Zia, the man really is completely out of his depth. His bumbling attempts at steering the ship in relatively calm waters strongly suggest that when (not if) a real crisis comes, management let resolution will be utterly beyond his ken.
I agree, the ruling elite/s seem woefully unprepared to meet the challenge, other than to call back the ‘man from yonder’. With more and more Thais (literally) having sold the family farm to grab themselves a slice of that Western, consumerist lifestyle, more and more of them become little more than urban serfs, utterly dependent on that monthly salary. The shock-absorber that was the rural economy is fast disappearing and with no sign of land reform on the horizon the tolerances within the system are getting tighter and tighter. Lose your job and that’s you on the breadline, and the bank will soon relieve you of the keys to that nice fancy 4×4 and the new-build house it’s garaged-in. With little or no social safety-net there’s a very long way to fall in this country.
On the up, Thailand has been a big open-air experiment in modernity, take away 7, 8, 9% growth p.a. and substitute close to 0% and what you end up with is an explosion in both private debt and graduate unemployment/under-employment – precision caps if there ever were.
Folks of infinitely greater ability than the current ‘PM’ would have their work cut-out for them in these circumstances, suggesting perhaps that ignorance truly is bliss.
Kingdom of fear (and favour)
A Thai – I agree “allow the King some time”. But it would help if he gave some indication of being like the early Spain’s King Juan Carlos. This would STRENGTHEN the Monarchy. As for Pavin – nobody becomes a senior academic at highly prestigious Kyoto University, unless they are extremely well qualified.
Despotic urbanism in Thailand
Meanwhile, Thailand’s most elite students are stirring. Eg. Chulalongkorn’s newly elected student leader, Netiwit.
Class dismissed? Economic fairness and identity politics in Indonesia
In Indonesia, the Pribumi Muslim elite have used anti-Chinese sentiment largely to benefit themselves, that is nothing new.
The data would have been better if it had ethnicity. I think the reason why the poor and less educated Muslims were more likely to be satisfied by Ahok’s performance is because the Javanese make up a greater % of the poor in Jakarta than among rich Muslims.
To get a better sense of what is going on you have to look at the 1st round results. Anies didn’t do as well in poor neighborhoods, with most of the support going to Agus and Ahok. Its only in the second round did those poor Agus supporters reluctantly vote for Anies. Anies is NOT a poor man’s candidate He might want to believe he is, but he is not.
The other question is why didn’t poor and less educated non-Muslims feel any antipathy towards Ahok? It seems that anti-Chinese bigotry is largely Muslim now.
Kingdom of fear (and favour)
This article on NM so disrespect to King. Allow the new King some time and he is great. Pavin is not serious for academic. He is a joke for all real Thais in Thailand. No body takes this fake scholarship for serious. So sad that NM sinks this far. Pavin knows that this is not worthy. any evidence? None of course.
Despotic urbanism in Thailand
Thanks for the article. I hadn’t realized the situation in this particular area of Khon Kaen was like this.
Despotic urbanism in Thailand
R.N.: You appear to have missed the two paragraphs where two decades of “squatter” involvement with activists and in negotiations with the “responsible officials” are credited with having led to “new political practices and identities” among the residents.
It’s difficult to square that with your imagined dupe. But I see again and again on this site that it is difficult for many foreigners to come to terms with the agency of Thai citizens, preferring instead to create these images of easily fooled and not very bright victims.
It is a topic worthy of investigation in my opinion.
Ahok’s satisfied non-voters: an anatomy
I think it was different here. Polls were showing after the First round, that Ahok was polling such about this level. So they had no problem declaring their support for Anies-Sandi. It was only during the last 1-2 weeks some polls were showing the tightening.
Trump isn’t a good comparison, because Trump still lost by a wide margin on the popular vote, which shows the polling was accurate at the national level. Trump won by thin margins in the Midwest.
As with Pauline Hanson and Le Pen polling results reflected in votes, there was o discrepancy. Pauline Hanson under perform what the polling was saying in the election.
Digging up the Dutch colonial past
This is very interesting and we must ‘take our hats off’ to the Dutch government for their transparency into the issues that trouble societies that have been troubled with an unknown,unclear past.
Malaysia, like wise should have an Independent Commission set up to inquire into UMNO (Alliance) participation in triggering racial riots in 1969, May 13, There is abundant evidence that the Malay community were fed up with the Malay elite’s control of the economic pie and started to revolt.
The opposition party’s success in the 1969 election was unacceptable to the ruling Malay government. The Chief Minister of Selangor-Harun, instigated the Malay community to riot which lead to the slaughter of Malay,Chinese and Indian community. Hundreds, if not thousands died-and this is a BIG SECRET till today. A racial religious war was triggered to avert a Malay class war. We can see the threats today coming from UMNO’s Najib Regime.
We need to know what happened on 13th May 1969 -its causes etc.
Class dismissed? Economic fairness and identity politics in Indonesia
Great use of available data, but something that minorities already know: Indonesian muslims are increasingly fundamentalist and intolerant. From the Friday sermons at periphery (lurahnya, camatnya, rektornya, copetnya harus muslim!); the lack of other newspapers except Republika in some campuses; salon muslimah only (who does you hair determines akhirat?); virginity test; LGBT test; the various 1212, 0303, 0505; overwhelming resources toward islamic religious activities in public schools; etc all lead to (another) upsurge of the desire for negara islam. The so-caled complexity is over rated, and sometimes one can not help but see it as a romanticized idea of Indonesia: “the Indonesian culture, which is soft-spoken and very respectful” – gimme a break. Go into any pasar and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone like that.
[The more interesting story would be how the minorities strive on, like Ahok, that lady lurah, some gay/lesbian entrepreneurs, etc, and thrive despite the constraint of an increasingly close-minded society].
Despotic urbanism in Thailand
An aspect of this problem that hasn’t arisen in this discussion is the imperfect and now stalled transition to the rule of law in Thailand. The process of informal occupation of railway land probably goes something like this: someone puts up a shack on railway land; he is reminded of the fact that he is on railway land by the “responsible” official, but instead of enforcing it, the official turns a blind eye to the law, and begins charging the occupier an informal rent which the official puts in his own pocket. When he is finally evicted, the “tenant” feels, with a certain amount of justification, that his rights have been trampled on. After all, he has been told all his life as a Thai subject, that the law is what officials say it is.
How Myanmar’s ‘national races’ trumped citizenship
It’s funny to see how Western researchers would love to point finger at Ne Win and the military for all Burma’s ills but ignore the elephant in the room: the British colonization. The concept of taingyintha was created due to animosity toward the deep inequality between British-favored races (Indians and Chinese who held vast portions of the country’s wealth) and the native population. After independence, most of the businesses were owned either by Indians or the Chinese due to deliberate British policies to exclude Burmans. Ne Win and many nationalists loathed this situation and taingyintha was created as a part of the solution to this problem.
Rohingyas were among the least of Ne Win’s concerns in his times for an administration beset with communist and ethnic rebels as well as the Cold War. Myanmarification was seen as an easy solution to the divisions and rebellions left behind by the British. i.e. “Hey, if you belong to an ethnic group or are a Bamar, you belong to the country and stop fighting to build your own.”
Talking about colonialism today would invite diehard apologists to argue “Hey, it’s 70 years ago, stop blaming us and start building your own country!” Yet nobody would say, “Hey, Holocaust was 70 years ago, and just forget about it and move on.” Integration has never been a problem for Chinese and Indians as they can say both groups have been in Myanmar since Anawrahta. It shouldn’t be a problem for Rohingyas too if they just mingle themselves as Indians. But the problem begins when you start saying “This is our land. We have been here since the world begins. All Arakanese kings were Muslims.” etc. etc.
So, Rohingya issue will never be resolved. Once the Western involvement has begun, there has never been an issue resolved quickly. Two sides will fight on and diverge, with all their name-calling and victim playing. For example, Myanmar democratization, which could have taken place as early as 1991, took additional 20 years under Western “intervention.” So keep fighting, while I take a back seat and observe the games being played.
Ahok’s satisfied non-voters: an anatomy
I think the author fails to mention the following:
First, Prabowo’s strategy isn’t risk free. If it was as easy as going hard right, why not just don’t a ISIS robe and declare Sharia. The closer Prabowo moves to the right, the more likely he is going to perform poorly with the Javanese. Giving front and center stage to FPI, will certainly get NU and Muhammadiyah all riled up in East/Central Java. And if you think what mosque did was bad in Jakarta to Ahok, I can’t even imagine what NU/Mihammadiyah mosque / pesentran will do to Prabowo in 2019, if they fear that Habib becomes Religious Affairs Minister.. If one side can play dirty, the other side can too. Some towns in East/Central Java have already banned the FPI.
Secondly, the author mentioned in his video about Anies running as VP, or even running for President. Anies has almost no base outside of Jakarta. and the suburbs of West Java. Prabowo barely lost to Jokowi in Jakarta in 2014. However, nation wide his path to victory is narrow. especially If Jokowi puts a Muslim Sumatran or Sundanese, then Prabowo is in trouble.
Thirdly, there is a West Java election in 2018, if PKS loses in West Java, Prabowo is going to be in trouble. PKS is particularly weak now because of high unemployment and slow economic growth. Its unemployment rate is double that of Central Java, East Java and Jakarta. It has slipped from having the 12 highest per capita income in Indonesia since 2005, to 22th as of 2015.
The 4th factor is Anies performance. Anies has about a year to show that he can do the job. All it takes is a bad rainy season, sanitation worker not showing up for work, because the bureaucrats are docking their salaries like before, squatters moving back into places like Pluit and Kalijodo, then Prabowo is going to have a tough time convincing people he can actually do the job. In 2014 and 2017, Prabowo and Anies ran a campaign where they can make outrageous promises, once people realize they can’t fullfil them, then people aren’t going to trust them.
There is very little discussion in the New Mandala about what Jokowi/Ahok did and how they managed to do it. As some who worked as a consultant in the Department of Public Works (PU) in the mid 1990s, and followed Ahok videos on occasion, Ahok’s conceptual framework for Jakarta is just follow 40-50 years of master plans that donor money has paid for, that has been poorly implement or not at all.
Western academics might think this developmentalist approach is deeply flawed. But Jakarta has faced 40 years of neglect. Western tax payers have poured hundreds of millions in studies pertaining to many issues in Jakarta over the last 40 years. For once we had a Governor who actually read some of them, and implement those suggestions
Anies programs aren’t backed by 40-50 years of best minds in both Indonesia and the donor community, its something he pulled from thin air during the campaign. Anies response to a problem is to have conferences and discussions, it just repeats what the Jakarta government has been doing for 40 years before Ahok/Jokowi.
Class dismissed? Economic fairness and identity politics in Indonesia
Wow !! Analysis of Indonesia does n’t get better than this !
Ahok’s satisfied non-voters: an anatomy
Above should read : “voters will NOT tell pollsters that they are going to vote Hanson, Le Pen, Trump – but then they DO.