Max Lane
Protest demonstrations continue to sprout every day across Indonesia on almost every kind of issue — socio-economic injustice, political abuse, administrative arbitrariness and ecological damage. Poverty and economic hardship still probably make up the cause driving the majority of these protest actions.
According to one of the alternative news services organised by the Australia-based Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific website, Indonesia Round-up, at the end of July, 2000 workers from the PT Sinar Angkasa company demonstrated in front of the East Java provincial governor's office in Surabaya demanding a wage increase to bring them up to the minimum wage of 685,500 rupiah (US$75) per month. One of the PT Sinar Angkasa employees, Slamet Riyanto, said that since January the workers had only been receiving Rp568,500 per month.
A similar number of workers had demonstrated the week before at the Surabaya provincial parliament but the company has continued to refuse to increase their wages.
Hundreds of workers from the PT Nainteks company in Bandung demonstrated in front of the offices of the West Java governor on July 25. They were demanding severance payments that the company had promised to pay six months earlier.
Some 200 street traders from the Tengah Market in Bandar Lampung, in south Sumatra demonstrated at the mayor's office on July 25. The protesters were opposing plans to evict them from their place of trading. Dozens of street traders who had been evicted from the Simpang Fountain area in the city of Padang city, in West Sumatra, have camped outside the West Sumatra provincial parliament.
Members of the Poor People's Union (SRM) demonstrated at the Medan city hall in northern Sumatra on July 25. The protesters were condemning the eviction of street traders. Violent clashes nearly broke out when the demonstrators were blocked by Medan civil service police as they entered the grounds of the hall. The traders also blockaded the Melan city hall and the street in front of it on August 3.
Dozens of fishers from the city of Ternate in the province of North Maluku demonstrated at the offices of the fisheries agency and the provincial governor on July 25. They were demanding that the government act firmly against foreign ships that are illegally taking fish from the North Maluku waters.
Some 600 part-time workers from the PT Wong Coco beverage export company in the Natar area of South Lampung went on strike on August 2 for four days. They demonstrated in front of the company's offices demanding to be employed as full-time workers.
That same week, dozens of residents from the Duren Jaya area of the Bekasi regency of West Java province whose homes were demolished to make way for the Ganda Agung underpass project demonstrated at the Bekasi local parliament on August 3. At leasr 73 homes were demolished for which the Bekasi city government has paid them compensation equivalent to $100 to build semi-permanent houses and $200 for permanent housing.
In his August 16 State of the Republic address to the parliament, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono claimed that poverty had declined from 23.4% of the population in 1999 to 16% in 2005. Almost immediately there arose a chorus of criticisms. The charge was led by the Indonesia Rise Up! group, an alliance of economists who have been increasingly critical of the government's subservience to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its policies.
At a subsequent press conference, Indonesia Rise Up! economist Revrisond Baswir attacked the government for not presenting the most recent poverty figures. He pointed out that even the government's Central Statistics Agency (BPS) figures show a rise from 16% of the population living in poverty in February 2005 to 18.7% in July 2005. The BPS figure for March this year remained at 18.7%. This would be one of the fastest rises of poverty since the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98.
Vice-President Jusuf Kalla, who is also chairperson of the Golkar party, has since argued it is "obvious" that the poverty rate had gone down as the Indonesian economy had grown by 5.6% last year.
"How can you say poverty has gone up when our economy is growing well?", Kalla asked. "The problem with many economists today is that they only like to see a gloomy picture of the economy."
In an August 4 Asia Times Online article, Jephraim Gundzi, president of Condor Advisers, which provides investment risk analysis to individuals and institutions worldwide, argued that, "Rather than an indication of profound underlying economic strength, Indonesia's very surprising economic performance in 2005 was the result of shortcomings in the country's national-accounts statistics produced by Badan Pusat Statistik (BPS)...
"These shortcomings were apparent in the 275% real growth of statistical discrepancies used to balance expenditure-based GDP with production-based GDP by BPS in 2005. The meteoric growth of statistical discrepancies accounted for more than one-half of the real growth of expenditure-based GDP last year. In other words, without the growth of statistical discrepancies, real GDP growth would have been below 3% in 2005."
In a statement issued on September 1, the BPS confirmed that its figures showed that the number of people living below the poverty line had increased by 4 million in the past year. Thirty-nine million people — 17% of the population — were under the poverty line which is set at Rp152,847 ($16) per month.
Worse still, BPS head Rusman Heriawan stated that another 70 million people — 30.9% of the population — lived just above this poverty line.
The official Indonesian poverty line however is lower than the poverty line used to determine who should get the government's per month poverty subsidy of about Rp200,000 ($22). A BPS spokesperson from its West Java office, for example, stated that people living on the official poverty line were in fact "very poor".
Indonesia Rise Up! has identified three reasons for the sudden rise in numbers of people living in poverty. The first was the impact of increases in petrol and kerosene prices instituted by the government and the IMF in October 2005. The second was the failure of the government's cash-for-the-poor program, and the third was the rise in food prices.
There had been a 17% increase in food prices over the past year, with a 26% rise in the price of rice. According to Baswir, 70% of the budgets of the poor is spent on food.
Following the BPS's September 1 announcement, the government was forced to admit that Indonesia Rise Up!'s criticisms of Yudhoyono's poverty claims were correct. Government spokespersons claimed that Yudhoyono did not use the more updated figures because the BPS had not officially released them.
After a wave of newspaper editorials across the country ridiculed Yudhoyono's excuse, he has taken his rosy figures out of his subsequent public speeches.