Rice and bread may be necessities of life, yet to many people energy, more particularly petrol, is the real essential requirement. And access to it a fundamental right. A real expensive one though 
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The price of petrol is rocketing. When I bought my first car I paid the equivalent of 2400 Rupiah per litre. Now it’s over 22000 Rupiah at the filling station:(. But we are addicted to that liquid drug. So we groused and grumbled at each hike, but accommodated.
Indonesians are no different. People hate expensive petrol.
But Indonesia’s system is quite different. The Dutch pay a huge excise duty to the state’s treasury for each drop of the liquid gold. But the Indonesian government does ( or did) the opposite. Knowing the price of crude oil has been going up and will continue to do so, it provides subsidy on petrol to keep the price for consumers relatively low. Which means an ever and fast growing amount of taxpayer’s money has to be spend on this subsidy.
The present SBY Administration is trying to put an end to that. Like his first Administration did a number of years ago, this one also will drastically cut the subsidy by the first of April. No wonder on the surface everything was turning on petrol last week.
The increase from 4500 to 6000 Rupiah per litre at the filling station will not bother the four wheel drives of the wealthy middle class too much. Yet a jump of 33% of course equals a shortcut to public anger. But tripling the price for users of gas cookers – which factually will happen- is much worse. It will hit the poor real hard. As does the general rise in the costs of living which the fuel hike will spark.
It also offers a golden opportunity for opposition groups to stage protests. Which they obviously did or tried to do.
Actually nervous authorities and sensationalist media created alarming images. Tempo( “TNI to Secure Palace, DPR and National Monument“), Jakarta Post (“Fuel protests across the country turn ugly“) and Jakarta Globe (“Massive Police, Military Operation Expected in Jakarta on Tuesday“) made me consider emergency plans to repatriate my son’s family from Jakarta (^_-) . I even read references to the killing and looting of 1998. Seemingly Indonesia was on the brink of revolution. Police at the ready, Army on the alert.
They were wrong. Nothing much happened. Some 30000 soldiers and police officers kept an eye on them while, scattered over the archipelago, a very modest number of 90000 peaceful people demonstrated.
Perhaps you tend to loose sight of reality if you belong to the ruling elite or are in the intellectual vanguard too long.
Those Members of Parliament who were sleeping “the sleep of the just” were right after all. Indonesia is too “bourgeois”, too middle class, already. Confronted with inconvenient socio-economic realities of free-market economies people prefer to accommodate. Just like people do in other middle-class -societies. They will decently present the bill at the ballot box.
Sorry for the news-media, but this was another revolution that didn’t come off 
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…and there’s no guarantee that the fuel price hikes will stick. SBY raised the price in 2006, only to reduce it a couple of months later. Who knows, the next president might just reduce the price once again. I would not be surprised.
Sleeping in public seems to be socially acceptable in Indonesia.
There were unrest in Medan, Makassar and tonight also in Jakarta. Some people got shot.
It kinda reminds me of 98 in the sense suharto was in Egypt before the unrest was escalated.
sure, sure. people will accomodate to the hike. i stop driving my ms. devil for the whole week opting for my husband’s old motorcycle and it’s not that bad. the ride helped me to save idr. 30.000 per day (a really huge saving after some chunks of my monthly salary ‘s “gone with the wind” for driving to work)and I have an extra 15-20 minutes luxury leisure time spent at home in the morning before dashing out to work (driving takes me 45 mnts to work, while riding takes me only 20-25 mnts to work). I’ve decided to take ms. devil out only on weekends or in the case of rain or other urgent occasions that force me to appear “bourgeoise” which are confined to times when i am home in bukittinggi. very rare indeed.
I don’t think the “98″ will repeat itself just because of the fuel hike. in 98 we have every reason on earth to topple the ruling regime. these days? ah…
I just laugh at the antics of protesters and the opportunist politicians. even my mom who knows very little about real politik comments that members of coalition that oppose the hike but remain in the coalition have no moral. i don’t think i have to explain what she means.
@ Mauricio: I doubt whether it will happen, yet if public opinion turns really ugly and the breeze of protests develops into a socially and economically disrupting hurricane, a (political) U-turn may be a wise decision.
As for sleeping in public by MPs, I think it is an indication of how much ( that is how little) they care about what their electorate thinks.
@ triesti: Yeah, it did strike me SBY was monitoring the situation at home from Seoul. If I tell my cynic self to shut his mouth I would say he perhaps did correctly assess the risks and concluded his government would be in control. Which, in spite of the casualties,actually proved to be right of sorts ( so far).
@ delvi: See,prohibitive fuel prices sometimes bear sound fruits – we leave our cars at home.Less air pollution and all that jazz. And some happy couples come even closer to the partner on his motorbike’s buddyseat
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Your mother appears to be a wise women to me.
while it sounds dangerous, but this meme defines what we feel right now…
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/369eer/
@ calvin: Touché. A meme or a state of mind? I’m afraid that it is not restricted to RI. Anyhow I do sympathize – I too despise my present government and live too comfortable to do anything substantially about it
. Typically bourgeois.
It was a bit churlish of the so called coalition partners to pull a last minute cut and run on their estwhile leader but such is the nature or politics. Personally I think that the president should resign now – if he can’t get important stuff through the parliament then whats the point? Too bad the indonesian system doesn’t work that way and politicians here appear to be immune to shame.
@pjbali: Amazing U-turn indeed. Yeah, they kind of screwed the president
. And possibly fooled the protesters as well; by July crude oil may exceed the 15% and the hike will take place as yet. Perhaps Bakrie should resign. But then, it is all in the game. Though probably the planning and “design” of the hike was pretty clumsy. In term of political psychology, that is.
One of the great contradictions of Indonesia is that culturally people are attuned to consensus, the Constitution itself prioritize consultation and consensus decision-making, but consensus on most things is what’s clearly lacking in the country. There is a great disconnect, a gaping divide between the cultural patterns of behaviour and founding principles of the country on one hand, and the real-life practice, on the other hand. The country has lacked a great consensus since independence.
Consensus decision-making, in any case, is over-rated. In many circumstances it leads to suboptimal decision-making or to paralysis.
A country’s government is a reflection of its people. I see it in my work. The same dysfunctional nature of government, I have witnessed in the work relationships among grass-roots groups and NGOs. As I pointedly asked our partner organizations, “How can you call and expect the politicians to get along and work together when you yourselves, two local NGOs, can barely do it yourselves?”
@ Mauricio: You’re quite right, I guess. It will take a lot of administrative mileage before the many contradictions, frictions and conflicts will have been eliminated. As long as that is not the case mushawara will often be counter productive. Which it especially is if decisive and urgent decision-making is necessary. Unfortunately polarisation is not an viable alternative either: it does provide even worse results most of the time. So, what else can be done but muddle through with “mushawara”, which after all is also an Indonesian ( well, Javanese) cultural tradition ?
Btw: Are you professionally involved with non-governmental organizations as consultant?
Let’s just say that I am not a stranger to working with governmental and non-governmental bodies in Indonesia.
@ Mauricio: I love answers that leave ample room for speculation
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I am a firm believer that a country is nothing more (and nothing less) than a mosaic of the minute, routine, every day customs, beliefs and actions of all its people. Our country is not the result of what “they” do, but rather the result of what I do, beginning with the most routine and personal of interactions.
I am presently in the market for a particular product. I emailed two retailers in Singapore and two retailers in Jakarta to inquire about availability and price. The two Singaporean retailers got back to me within 24 hours with the requested information. I have yet to hear from the Indonesian retailers.
So, if we can’t get it together on this simple and small scale between individuals, how do you purport to get it together at the national level? Actions, good habits and coordinated action yield results. Just ask Singapore.
@ Mauricio: I’m with you concerning your opinion on a country ( though “they” are important when it comes to a reasonable infrastructure,a reliable police force and a number of other issues; maybe that’s at least partly why S’pore is a financial-economic success).