So the president of Indonesia is in good humour a day after winning the battle to deny an official inquiry into the rice import deal (Jakarta Post 26/1/06). Nobody on the street is laughing.
This has got to be one of those LPPL (or damned if you do and damned if you don’t for the non-Hokkien spewing among us) situations.
I’ll paint a little context for you: About a week ago, it was announced that the government of Indonesia would start importing rice from the likes of Vietnam and other South East Asian neighbours. The next day, the news was flooded with protests from all quarters, calling the policy a shambolic act of corruption. Then calls for an investigation into the deal came in, and within 3 days the matter was debated in the national legislature. The Indonesian bureaucracy set a new speed record for action.
Indonesia needs a lot of things right now — a straight government, tonnes of foreign investment, a more conservative fiscal plan. The one thing it doesn’t need, it has been argued rather forcefully, is more rice. As it happens, Indonesia is one of the largest producers of rice in the region. (When you think of idyllic Bali, what do you imagine? Temples? Beaches? Padi-fields? When you fly over Java what are you likely to see? Urban sprawl? Uncontrolled industrial pollution? Terraced rice fields?) So naturally the farmers are flipping their lids over this new threat to their income, and local governments are worried of losing precious taxation, and the man on the street is pissed off that top officials have found yet another way to make a few quick bucks on the side (nobody here doubts that the deal allows a few top dogs to skim some of the fat off the milk).
Which is totally understandable, really, except that the alternative is just as whacked. Protect the farmers, as the mantra on the street is right now, and the price of rice continues to remain ridiculously high for a producing country. Ban rice-imports and you risk letting a cabal of greedy distributors hold the average consumer ransom.
Indonesia is one of those places where you really feel, deep inside your gut, everything is depressingly FUBAR. Suharto-era protectionism set the Indonesian economy back a couple of decades when the patrons got run out of office. Industries and monopolies that survived into the nineties with poor foundations and practices because they greased many palms, found themselves unable to cope with liberalization restructuring in the aftermath of the financial crisis. The country is still recovering from the disintegration of the Suharto-era economy, but at least consumer confidence is gaining by the day. At the same time, you wonder if it’s a false dawn because so much of the day-to-day running of the place takes place in the informal economy. Business grinds to a halt when the handouts stop. And you see so much of it everywhere that you take it for granted, you take it matter of factly, you even make excuses for it ("this is the way of life here").
In the long run, the people are better served by an economy that is competitive. But nobody ever thinks of the long run here. Everyone looks out for the best short-term deal for themselves. Officials, businessmen, farmers, cops. When nearly every problem can be solved by dangling an immediate carrot, who gives a hoot about long term well-being? Who looks ahead?
The import of rice probably will make a few people richer on the side. The banning of rice imports will probably also do likewise for a few men. Either way, someone wins, while nearly everyone else loses.
