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INDONESIA: MY QUICK TAKE

 

Here are three videos about Indonesia. The first link (Facebook) is the best brief on what is happening in Indonesia. The young girl is so precise and spot on. My comments at the bottom.

1. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/16uZ6DYKDV/

 2. DW (German TV).

 

 

 

 3. CNN TV

 

 

 

My Comments:

 

This morning our Indonesian maid said that the latest news says people are burning down the houses of ranking government officials living in their areas. The troubles are more widespread. And the people of Indonesia do not like the president Prabowo. Prabowo has been president of Indonesia for just over TEN months (since 20 October 2024).  So in just TEN months the people are rioting in the streets. I think Prabowo will go the way of the Dodo.

 

Indonesia is suffering the same fate as false religious teachings or ridiculous religious teachings that do not work.

 

Religious teachings that do not work are dying out in double quick time. Saudi Arabia does not believe in Salafism / Wahhabism anymore. It does not work. Shiaism in Iran is on the brink of crashing down. There are other examples. Do we need to discuss Taliban Afghanistan?

 

The way religion has been taught has not changed for a thousand years. Today religious education at the seminaries can take 4 to 6 years. In India the madrassahs teach their students for six years before they are passed out. In Iran it takes more than years for a mullah (who is already qualified) to achieve the level of an Ayatollah.

 

Which is why religious people are often a  tad too arrogant and full of themselves. 'I have studied religion for 10 years'. Because it does take that long to acquire whatever it is that they acquire.

 

And when questions, critiques, different religious interpretations etc come up they take an equally long time to manifest. After decades or centuries someone may write an article or a book suggesting an alternative view or a complete break from a certain viewpoint. The previously held beliefs become unacceptable. For example Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia is over 200 years old. They have just got rid of it - to an extent.

 

So the crafting of these different ideas take centuries and debunking them may also take centuries and decades.

 

Until the advent of the Internet and the Social Media. And now Artificial Intelligence and its channels like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Grok etc.

 

I can craft one question asking ChatGPT to list all the Seven Ecumenical Councils of early Christianity and cross reference them with which Byzantine Emperor and Muslim Caliph concurrent at the relevant periods. 

 

It is amazing. ChatGPT was made especially for me.

 

And the answers arrive in seconds. What would take a student or researcher months and years of study and research is now delivered in seconds. With precise academic references. 

 

So the debunking of any religious ideas can also happen within micro-seconds.  If a religious idea is flawed, false, not reliable etc, someone on X, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, You Tube, the blogs etc will upload a critique or rebuttal etc that can destroy SIX years of study at the seminary within seconds and minutes.

 

Now here is the problem - the religious fraternity has not fully caught on to this new reality yet.

 

The Deobandi fellows, the Taliban, the Wahhabis, the Ayatollahs have to update their teaching curriculum - how do they handle criticisms, rebuttals and debunking which now happens in split seconds? They cannot go back and study for another SIX years before they can rebut with an answer. Elon Musk would have landed on planet Mars by then. 

 

And if their religious ideas are flawed or do not work, their demise will also be in split seconds. 

 

What is the similarity to Indonesia?

 

27 years ago Indonesians woke up and threw out the dictator President Suharto. That was the end of the dictatorships that began in Indonesia since Soekarno in 1945. Indonesians had suffered 53 years of military dictatorships from 1945 until 1998.  

 

1998 was a watershed in the history of Indonesia when the country became a democracy. For the first time in its history Indonesia held free and fair elections. But you would have expected real change in Indonesia over the past 27 years. Yes there was more freedom, free speech, more democracy but nothing else has changed much.

 

The people are still largely poor. Corruption is possibly worse than ever. Even to get a passport Indonesians have to pay a bribe.  If you want to be a bakso vendor by the roadside it is available but big businesses are still subject to connections, cables, licenses, permits, controls, political patronage and bla bla. There is plenty of rent seeking. Does this sound familiar?  

 

So the Indonesian economy cannot realise its full potential. And when the economy cannot realise its full potential there will not be enough growth and new jobs to absorb the approximately 3 million new Indonesians being born every year (population touching 300 million). 

 

Then there is the korupsi. Corruption has never slowed down in Indonesia. And corruption means public funds. Government budgetary allocations are siphoned out, leakages, simply stolen, misappropriated or wasted in grandiose, ego boosting projects (like the high speed rail, the disastrous Nusantara project etc) which suck up so much public funds but deliver so little to the public.

 

Not enough Indonesians can afford to ride on the 45 minute High Speed Train between Jakarta and Bandung.   Our ERL (90 mph) has done much better because it goes to the KLIA airport and it has been running for 23 years already - since 2002. 

 

Bottomline is what you see in the videos above. Plenty of poor people with little prospect of their lives improving. But each one of them has a smartphone.

 

All 300 million Indonesians now know their Wakil Rakyat are paid US6000 per month - which is 30 TIMES the minimum wages in Jakarta (according to that young girl in the Facebook posting above).

 

When that really foolish governor or regent said the rioters were 'peasants', 300 million Indonesians knew about it instantly via Tik Tok, X, Instagram, FB etc. 

 

You lie, you steal, you say stupid things, you cheat - the people will know about it in micro-seconds. 

 

Useless religion and useless politicians now suffer the same problems - instant exposure and instant debunking.  

 

And time becomes their greatest enemy. From 1997  till 2025 they did not change much in Indonesia. The people can see that. Yesterday, today and tomorrow nothing much changes or nothing at all. Why? Because they are corrupt, incompetent, foolish or all three. So as more time passes the people become more fed up. Time is their enemy No. 1. 

 

It is like a lazy student who does not keep up with his lectures and his lessons. He is always one month behind. When he tries to catch up with his lessons, the lecturer has already moved on to new topics and new chapters in the book. So he can never catch up. Time becomes his No. 1 enemy. The more time passes the more unfinished work piles up. 

 

I do not see a good ending for Indonesia. Another Islamic country entering the Club of Doom.