Indonesia: Motion Sickness

INDONESIA

Motion Sickness

Indonesia, the world’s third-largest democracy, is developing at breakneck speeds.

Since the ouster of longtime dictator General Muhammad Suharto in 1998 and the nation’s first democratic elections in 2004, Indonesia’s extremely diverse 261 million citizens have enjoyed more political freedoms than ever before.

After his election in 2014, President Joko Widodo – the nation’s first leader not belonging to the political or military elite – set about implementing reforms to bring Indonesia into the 21st century.

To attract direct investment and diversify the economy, Indonesia passed laws to streamline bureaucracy and set its sights on sectors like textiles, entertainment and packaged foods, Bloomberg reported. The ease of doing business has vastly improved in Indonesia since Widodo took office, and the economy is growing at a healthy pace.

Widodo also created a universal healthcare scheme that ­­offers all Indonesians a slew of services for free. It’s a huge improvement on the previous system, where the poor either remained sick or entered into lending schemes to get treatment, the South China Morning Post wrote.

But the pace of Widodo’s reforms may be much too fast for Indonesian society.

Indonesia, the country with the single largest Muslim population in the world, has preached equality and secularism by having six official religions. But last year, conservative Islamic factions became increasingly mobilized in local elections.

Some pious provinces have been particularly resistant to change and still practice public punishments in accordance with Sharia law, the Associated Press reported.

Now there are whispers that Widodo’s likely primary challenger for 2019’s presidential race is aligning himself with radicals to win votes, writes the Lowy Institute’s the Interpreter.

Widodo’s election may have been a symbolic end to elite rule, but Indonesia’s political system runs on a rulebook of pay-to-play, writes the Diplomat. The reality of that political situation isn’t likely to change anytime soon, either.

Meanwhile, even the country’s most promising achievements – its healthcare system and its economy – are experiencing motion sickness.

Much of Indonesia’s population lives in rural outposts spread across the archipelago and have little to no access to medical care. Those people aren’t reaping the benefits of the new system, wrote the South China Morning Post.

And economic growth has meant more consumption, which has meant more waste. In a country where tradition dictated packaging food in banana leaves, not plastic, pollution has become so bad that the government has had to mobilize the army to help clean up the mess, the BBC reported.

This year and the next will be pivotal years in Indonesia as local and presidential election campaigns come into full swing, and despite shifting societal and economic conflicts around the nation, the government has promised stability, Reuters reported.

But being stable and being quick to catch up don’t always go hand-in-hand.