Monday, 20Nov06
Highlights: Yogya, President Bush visit,
I caught a 6am flight to Yogya to visit Nina as she gets ready to graduate from UGM on Wednesday. (=
Coming back to Yogya is always a positive experience. Feels like coming home.
Today is President Bush’s State visit to Indonesia in Bogor.
Quite the anticipated event here. It’s been splashed across the front page of newspapers for weeks,,, usually in under the context of demos and pricetags. It’s been an interesting opportunity to vent frustration over unpopular Middle East issues (unbalanced support of Israel, Iraq war), but the second point is a bit of a sham.
8 years ago, when Soeharto was still President (after 32 years), Indonesian’s didn’t have the right to demo or rail against a nationally sanctioned event like this. Now they do. And it was mostly peaceful across the nation.
The second point is an interesting one. Price figures of uprooting parts of the Botanical gardens to prepare a special helicopter landing pad in Bogor, and security for the event ran up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s printed in the newspapers.
People are upset that so much money is being blown on a 10 hour visit by the American President, when that money could be better spent helping earthquake, tsunami & mud-flood victims around the country. Hard to disagree.
The unreported half of the story is: US Embassy hasn’t asked for any of this expensive preparation. You wouldn’t know that by reading the papers or talking to Indonesians in the street. (= Seems someone in the Jakarta government has cleverly used President Bush’s visit as a scapegoat to launch an expensive project that someone else wanted.
There was a little demo going on in front of UGM campus when I arrived. Mostly fired up students getting their thoughts out & waving a few flags. Nothing threatening towards me in my cab as I drove by.
Highlights: Yogya, President Bush visit,
I caught a 6am flight to Yogya to visit Nina as she gets ready to graduate from UGM on Wednesday. (=
Coming back to Yogya is always a positive experience. Feels like coming home.
Today is President Bush’s State visit to Indonesia in Bogor.
Quite the anticipated event here. It’s been splashed across the front page of newspapers for weeks,,, usually in under the context of demos and pricetags. It’s been an interesting opportunity to vent frustration over unpopular Middle East issues (unbalanced support of Israel, Iraq war), but the second point is a bit of a sham.
8 years ago, when Soeharto was still President (after 32 years), Indonesian’s didn’t have the right to demo or rail against a nationally sanctioned event like this. Now they do. And it was mostly peaceful across the nation.
The second point is an interesting one. Price figures of uprooting parts of the Botanical gardens to prepare a special helicopter landing pad in Bogor, and security for the event ran up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s printed in the newspapers.
People are upset that so much money is being blown on a 10 hour visit by the American President, when that money could be better spent helping earthquake, tsunami & mud-flood victims around the country. Hard to disagree.
The unreported half of the story is: US Embassy hasn’t asked for any of this expensive preparation. You wouldn’t know that by reading the papers or talking to Indonesians in the street. (= Seems someone in the Jakarta government has cleverly used President Bush’s visit as a scapegoat to launch an expensive project that someone else wanted.
There was a little demo going on in front of UGM campus when I arrived. Mostly fired up students getting their thoughts out & waving a few flags. Nothing threatening towards me in my cab as I drove by.
posted by jonathan adventures at 1:28 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home