Thursday 11 October 2007

A little Update

Yup, Lazy as I am I put a few up. Thankfully it's Id Al Fitri here which means "time off". I'll get round to a more complete update over the next few days!

Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud

Recently the Indonesian president visited the site of the “mud volcano” and was said to have been “moved to tears over the devastated lives of the thousands of families affected by the mudflow delivered to their homes courtesy of Bakrie-owned Lapindo Brantas Inc” After the visit in July he decided to order the company to do the what they should have done months ago.





The Jakarta Post, the premier English language rag in Jakarta (better be careful, I get a lot of my material from this paper) stated:

“Even the Indonesian President must be convinced by now that Aburizal Bakrie is more of a liability to the nation than he is an asset. Bakrie's continued presence in the post of Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for the People's Welfare clearly does not serve the interests of the cabinet, the government, or the people of Indonesia.

The only interests served by the continued presence of Bakrie in that senior and completely inappropriate post are Bakrie's own and, to a rapidly diminishing degree, the partisan political interests that saw him appointed in the first place. “

Says it all. Bakrie does not appear to be a very nice man!

For a bit of background, Bakrie ran the economics portfolio during Abdurrahman (Gus Dur) Wahid's presidency and performed magnificently as the skipper of the ship which guided Indonesia to the worst economic performance (read total fucking meltdown) in the country's history.

A Political Party (Golkar) executive and a mega millionaire (US$ not Indonesian Rupiah) he joined the current government and appears to be on course to give a convincing repeat performance off his inability to rise to the standards and levels of integrity required to be an honest politician. (But what the fuck, we are in Indonesia, honest politicians have never existed here).

Bakrie’s main problem is that he ignores his social responsibilities and has an entirely “I don’t give a fuck” attitude to the conflict of interests that is well recognised by other political forces outwith Indonesia.

Bakrie as the senior cabinet member responsible for the welfare of the thousands upon thousands of people whose homes, villages, and livelihoods have been wiped out by a disaster caused by a company he controls, would be unthinkable in most democratic countries.

So as you can see, once again, the nepotistic, cronyfied (is it a word) values entrenched within the Indonesian system still work as effectively as they have done since independence, and as always, it’s only the little people who suffer.

Oh, nearly forgot, the instructions to tidy up the mud-flow, ease the suffering that the President was said to have given, I think they were ignored!

Bogor Days


My driver calls it Bogor Day, it happens twice a week, Monday’s and Friday’s. Bogor Day is a result of the Friday exodus to Bogor and the return on Monday of those who are rich enough to own property in Bogor, or those who live in Bogor returning home for the weekend.

The Jagorawi Toll road is chock a block, all access from PK Rambutan until Cawang is slow and the result is a tortuous crawl to work.
This however need not be the case, the construction of a toll road from Rambutan to Bekasi has been underway for two years now and, much like the new channels needed to control the flooding, cannot be completed until certain sections of land can be purchased.

Speculators, squatters, tenants and fraudster’s all own paper showing the land to be theirs! Trying to ascertain who the true owners are is like finding the proverbial “needle in a haystack” Even after this has been firmly identified in court, things are not always simple in clearing the land to allow construction to progress.

This can be a very real winners and losers situation as, more often than not the Police and Military are called in to remove the residents, many of whom have paid for their title deed’s only to find out that they are worthless.

In the dog eat dog world of Jakartan Land deals, even hotels, shopping malls, high rise offices and apartment complexes have been caught up in the land wars. There are in fact reported case off buildings being erected in designated catchments whose function is to control the annual floods.


Pak Fuckwit A “This flooding should never have happened, we have designated catchments to curtail the inflow of water from Bogor”

Pak Fuckwit B “No we don’t, there’ a shopping mall and an apartment complex in that area”

Pak Fuckwit A “How did that happen, no planning permission was given?”

Pak Fuckwit B “ They don’t need planning permission, the company concerned is above the law, and anyway, it’s too late now, it has been completed and the apartments are full”

Pak Fuckwit A “Better leave it as it is then, don’t want to upset PT Dontgiveafuck”

And so it goes on….methinks Bogor Days will be continuing for a while!

Correction. Being the lazy bastard that I am I did not post this when I wrote it. The new Toll Road opened about a month ago! Only takes 35 minutes to get to work now instead of 1 hour and ten minutes. Only problem is the Toll Fee’s increased and everyone stopped using the tolls and now the artery roads are choked.

Ho Fucking Hum!

Wednesday 10 October 2007

Just around the corner!


With most of us barely shaken by the last two earthquakes, we can look forward to our next set of calamities. It’s almost upon us, that time of the year when it starts to piss down big style, and yet again, no-one seems to give a fuck.

The big question is whether the city fathers can arouse enough activity to have the residents clean up the shit that they have dumped into the water ways and gutters over the summer and get these rubbish choked flow paths cleaned before the next floods come?

The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (read woefully ineffective bunch of twats) have issued a warning “that heavy rainfall expected in November could result in flooding in a number of regions in the country”. Funny old thing that: this crap happens every year and they issue warnings, however, that may be due to the lack off memory retention in the area. (It’s known as the “Lupa” effect, Lupa being a uniquely Indonesian term for “I’ve forgotten” or “I do not want to do this so I will just ignore it and tell you I forgot”)

"The cause of flooding will be heavier rainfall than usual in these areas during the coming months," Hery Fuckwit, deputy assistant supervisor manager head of the observation division at the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency, was claimed to have said.

No shit Sherlock! Hery, I have some news for you, the rains are the same, it’s just the drainage is getting worse.

It is estimated that about 80 percent of the total 220 'periodical zones' in Indonesia will start entering the rainy season in October and November. A periodical zone is an area with consistency between the season and the actual climate, for the layman wet and dry seasons are as suggested “wet and dry”.

In fairness the BMG, along with the Public Works Ministry and the National Coordination Agency for Surveying and Mapping, has marked the potential flood areas into sub districts, which can assist in a measure of preparation for the onslaught. (And there are “bucket loads” of them.)

"We made the predictions based on our study of the global climate," Hery said, carefully wiping his crystal ball and putting the Ouji board back in his drawer.

A climate expert from the Bandung Institute of Technology, Zadrach L. Dupe (No shit, real name), said the warning from BMG should help people begin preparing now for possible flooding.

"We only have a few weeks left. If we want to prevent floods we have to engage in community services, such as cleaning up gutter and improving drainage systems."

Alternatively, how about teaching people where to dispose of their garbage, request the Jakartan authorities create a Waste Disposal Agency which works, build the proposed flood canal’s which would handle the excess waters and consider land management systems which prevent natures natural barriers from being developed for more high rise apartments and malls.
Seems pretty fucking straightforward to me!