demokrasi terpimpin

Soe Hok Gie, karakter dari filem Gie, lakonan Nicholas Saputra ada mengutarakan konsep demokrasi terpimpin, di mana filem itu menyerlahkan Gie, seorang demonstran, sebagai lancang mengkritik ideologi politik ini yang pertama kalinya diperkenalkan oleh bapak Presiden Sukarno. Menurutnya demokrasi terpimpin adalah sebagai topeng untuk menindas golongan bawahan, iaitu berdasarkan elemen autocracy di dalam konsep tersebut. Pada amatannya, sistem ini telah menggagalkan masyarakat, di mana rakyat hidup semakin melarat dengan kenaikan harga barang dan juga bahan api. Perlu diingat zaman Soe Hok Gie ini merupakan zaman parti komunis berleluasa di Indonesia.

He was famously quoted to say this about his teacher who failed him,  “Guru model begituan, yang tidak tahan dikritik boleh masuk keranjang sampah. Guru bukan dewa dan selalu benar. Dan murid bukan kerbau”.

I can resonate this statement with a number of situations. Especially where teachers who think they are right all the time and leave no room for constructive arguments/discussions. I can’t recall how many times I was shunned by the teachers for voicing out, disagreeing and at times even just by asking questions. But more on this in a separate post.

Berbalik kepada konsep demokrasi terpimpin. Coming across this concept has brought my memories back to this one time in Bali in September 2014 where I had the chance to befriend a local Balinese surfer. I asked him about the local projects being developed in Jakarta, including the MRT line. Told him that it’s good that Indonesians will soon be able to commute using rapid trains. His short reply was, korupsi semua itu.

Not that his opinion is profoundly mattered, knowing him, doubt that he reads or understands economic needs and nature of a country. But still, its interesting that he thinks of every development projects in Jakarta is corrupted.

Which brings to my next point, nationalism. Where art thou?

Mahasiswa yang terdahulu, baik dari negara Indonesia mahupun Malaysia, berjuang atas semangat nasionalisme, iaitu sayangkan negara. Masyarakat ketika itu sering berfikiran kritis dan radikal. Tindak tanduk perjuangan sering berlandaskan semangat cintakan negara, yang well at that time Indonesia and Malaysia were infested with communism.

Bagi aku kita perlu punya rasa takut, yakni takut akan hilangnya nilai perjuangan untuk mengangkat masyarakat dan negara kepada keadaan yang lebih baik. Apa yang aku elakkan ialah manusia sekeliling yang berfikiran jumud, for them are lazy dan selalu mengikut sahaja.

Masalahnya sekarang rakyat semakin kritis, sering mempersoalkan dan mengutuk tindak tanduk kerajaan / pemimpin. Namun atas dasar apa? Patriotisme atau sebaliknya? Jika dilihat apa sahaja tindakan kerajaan akan dikritik sepenuhnya oleh rakyat yang pada pengamatan aku tidak faham / malas untuk memahami dasar-dasar, terutamanya dasar ekonomi negara.

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Emerging Market : Indonesia Growth Target

Not So Fast: Why Indonesia Could Miss Growth Target in 2015

by Andrew Janes

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-03/not-so-fast-why-indonesia-could-miss-widodo-s-2015-growth-goal?hootPostID=926458c71835f4370b3156be36c64991

 

(Bloomberg) — Indonesian President Joko Widodo says Southeast Asia’s biggest economy can achieve the official growth target of 5.7 percent this year. That could be a taller order than he anticipates.Widodo, who took office in October, inherited an economy fettered by years of under-investment in infrastructure, plunging commodity prices and the withdrawal of U.S. monetary stimulus. The central bank has kept monetary policy tight to protect a vulnerable rupiah and gross domestic product probably grew 4.9 percent last quarter from a year earlier, the slowest pace since 2009, according to a Bloomberg survey.

The president, known as Jokowi, is promising to rev things up by fast-tracking large road, port and power projects and cutting red tape. He’s seeking to woo investment and boost non-commodity exports, targeting an expansion of as much as 6.3 percent to 6.9 percent next year.

“We are confident to have the target of our economic growth” of 5.7 percent this year, the president said in a Feb. 2 interview in Jakarta. “But we must increase our exports volume and we must reform our bureaucracy. We must invite FDI.”

Yet the World Bank sees Indonesia growing 5.2 percent this year and 5.5 percent in 2016. The economy probably expanded 5.06 percent in 2014, according to a Bloomberg survey ahead of data due Feb. 5 in Jakarta. Here are five things that could stand in the way of Indonesia’s growth goal for this year.

Commodity Prices

The prices of Indonesia’s key commodity exports may not recover anytime soon. Coal has fallen further this year and has now more than halved in price since the end of 2010. Palm oil capped the biggest January decline since 2010 as demand weakens amid a supply glut, after slumping 16 percent in the past year.

While the plummeting price of crude presented Jokowi with an opportunity to scrap gasoline subsidies, it will also sap government revenue.

The state will lose about 158.8 trillion ($13 billion) of revenue because of the drop in oil prices, according to a Nomura Holdings Inc. research note last week by economists including Euben Paracuelles in Singapore. That negates much of the 230 trillion rupiah of budget funds freed up by the fuel subsidy overhaul.

Sticky Deficit

Indonesia was dubbed one of the fragile five emerging-market economies by Morgan Stanley in 2013 because its large external deficit made it vulnerable to capital outflows. While the shortfall in the current account has narrowed from a record 4.4 percent of gross domestic product in the second quarter of that year, Bank Indonesia is forecasting a deficit of 3 percent to 3.5 percent of GDP this year, compared with an estimate for about 3 percent in 2014.

The big infrastructure projects being promised by Jokowi could spur imports, putting pressure on the balance, according to Ndiame Diop, the World Bank’s lead economist for Indonesia. This persistent deficit makes it more difficult for Bank Indonesia to follow global peers in cutting borrowing costs to bolster economic growth.

Standard Chartered Plc said most of its Indonesian clients see the central bank holding or increasing its policy rate in 2015, according to a note released Feb. 3.

Implementation Risks

The stand-off between Indonesia’s police force and its anti-corruption agency, the KPK, has dominated local media in recent weeks. A failure by the president to show strong leadership could undermine his credibility for pushing ahead with economic reforms and cracking down on graft.

“There could be a rippling effect,” the World Bank’s Diop says. He also points out that about 50 percent of the central government budget is actually managed by sub-national governments, raising the possibility that the implementation of infrastructure and social spending will be slower than expected because of the difficulty in transmitting policy from the top.

Global Risk

The global economy is unlikely to provide much support to Indonesia this year, with weaknesses in Japan, Europe and China, Indonesia’s largest export market. Meanwhile, a recovery in the U.S. is forecast to prompt the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, reducing the appeal of higher-yielding assets in emerging markets like Indonesia.

“This is going to be a very tough year externally,” Mari Pangestu, a former Indonesian trade minister, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Wednesday.

A strengthening U.S. economy and slowing growth in China is a “bad combination” for Indonesia as commodity prices will probably keep falling, said Benedict Bingham, the International Monetary Fund’s senior resident representative in Jakarta.

Time Lag

The economic overhaul being promised by Jokowi could take time to benefit the economy. Large infrastructure projects may take a while and the goal of lifting non-commodity exports is dependent on increasing the supply of skilled labor.

“Whether we can actually roll out the infrastructure projects fast enough is really the big question mark,” said Pangestu. “The concern is about implementation.”

The government also needs to review its trade and labor policies, which look more defensive rather than focused on winning global market share, according to Bingham.

“2015 needs to be seen as a year in which the foundations for the medium-term strategy are set,” he said. “It’s not going to be a year where the pay-off from this strategy is going to become immediately apparent.”

 

Stronger dollar and higher rates

Fed rate normalisation

Most analysts are forecasting an increase in fed fund rate and tightening of US monetary conditions, perhaps by second half of 2015. This move will impact  Asian countries, being the large recipients of QE flows and thus vulnerable to sudden stops in the flow.

Further to this, China slower growth and weak imports, as opposed to US’ stronger import would dampen Asia’s export recovery.

Data from Bank of America Merrill Lynch

 Look where Malaysia is?

On the eastern side, Abenomics have failed to achieve the objectives (the three arrows) and Japan is thus likely to be in deflationary state. With the current state of low oil price, Japan as net energy importer would benefit from it, and BOJ has thus lowered its CPI forecast to 1% which has suggested that further monetary easing would be necessary. Subsequent to this yen is expected to go lower to 130 by year end (source: ABN Amro) and putting downward pressure on prices which in turns may delay their inflation target this year.

US is certainly benefiting from potential rate hike and stronger dollar. As we can see in the recent years there is a continuous upbeat in the US economy.

Certainly there are many more areas to look at, Malaysia for example as the exporter of oil impacted by the fell in oil price which has prompted the government to revise its 2015 budget. Greece crisis and Eurozone issues at large are another angle to look at which certainly have impacts on the global growth this year. On the other hand, Indonesia, India and Philippines are enjoying growth and positive outlook, stemming particularly from the policy revision, rebound in government spending and fiscal reduction pledge by their respective governments.

Malaysia Market Reform – How to Get out of Fiscal Debt Situation

Poland and Slovakia among many other countries currently are dubbed as high income nations, where these countries have made significant economic reforms after being stagnant in the early years. South Korea for instance, has amazing economic growth within a short period of time, where it was once a devastating nation due to the Korean war and had managed to transform to becoming one of the wealthiest nation in the world.  

Challenges for Malaysia, are of short term and long term, where the next general election is in 2018, and until then there are key areas that the current government administration is tasked to do.  In this case few economic matters are of concern, which are reducing the government debt, implementation of GST, strengthening of ringgit and reducing the debt-GDP ratio. Now there are two things that are also of concern in my opinion, in terms of our corruption and competitiveness indexes. We are still far from achieving corruption-free state and our competitiveness index is at the unsatisfactory level (24^th out of 148 countries).

A reform can simply be defined as a major policy change. In economical sense, this could mean a positive improvement to the society, such as in reducing the country’s fiscal deficit. A successful reform could also mean by spreading the burden of the adjustment of government expenditures and revenues across income classes and income sources.

 Some suggested economic reforms:

– Enhancing the role of private sector in the society and limiting government’s involvement in infrastructure projects, which in turns would lessen the contingent liabilities for the government.

-To increase government’s revenue (to achieve >25% of GDP) via more efficient tax collection system and to move away from oil and gas revenues stream.

– Eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets and lowering trade barriers. As for capital market point of view, to limit foreign holdings in the stock market, to limit GLC participation by way of encouraging the GLCs to sell down their ownership in stocks as well as to ease companies participation in the ACE market and also their movement from ACE market to Main market of Bursa Malaysia.

– Limiting the subsidies and handouts. Though BR1M is a measure of targeted form of subsidy, it is still bearing the characteristics of featherbedding, which discourages and limits self development in the society.

– Allowing media freedom

-Encourage self reliance in food production, which means promoting and supporting the agriculture industry.

All these economic reforms in transforming the country’s political economy should start from the grass roots level, and that includes individual, household and the society at large. Educating the rakyat on the necessities of reforms and difficult government decision such as subsidy rationalisation should be a priority. Any policy reform is indeed painful at the beginning, which largely due to people receptive of changes, thus it is important for the government to disseminate the right information.

Pak Jokowi

Indonesia, with its massive population of 250 million people, is grippling with issues and struggles; providing enough basic necessities to the people, food, shelter, healthcare and jobs. Jakarta alone is swarmed with 10 million people and due to its large population and lack of public transportation services, the city is often infested with problems such as flood and gridlocks. It is said that 440 cars are bought everyday.. in Jakarta alone.

In Pluit (district within Jakarta) alone there are 7,000 squatters, of whom 2,000 has been relocated to low rent housing under Jokowi leadership. Of all his manifesto, one of his aims is to transform the slum infested Pluit to the better, by having city parks and proper housing development.

Who is this Jokowi, you’d ask? Joko Widodo or Jokowi is the Governor of Jakarta since 2012. Previously he was the Mayor of his hometown of Solo for 8 years, where he has managed to cut crime, revived the local economy and rebranded the city as the centre of Javanese culture and tourism, among many other achievements. This year, Fortune magazine has listed this man as The World’s 50 Great Leaders. Whereas in 2012 alone Jokowi received 3rd place of the 2012 World Mayor Prize for “transforming a crime-ridden city into a regional center for art and culture and an attractive city to tourists”.  In February 2013 he was nominated as the global mayor of the month by the The City Mayors Foundation based in London.

How’s that for a resume?

These are some of Pak Jokowi approach as the Governor:

-Most of the time he’s not at the office, he goes out to the street, market place, hospitals to meet the people. this is a culture / habit which is referred to as blusukan in indonesian.

-He cycles to/from home every Friday since November last year in encouraging the city dwellers to ditch the car and cycles/walks/uses bus to get around.

-He listens to Metallica.

-He ditches his formal uniform and donnes plain khakis and cheap shoes while doing his rounds of meeting people.

-Doesn’t use police escort while commuting. Doesn’t have bodyguards while doing the routine blusukan.

-He was even spotted ditching his formal car and hopped on a motorbike to beat the notorious traffic.

-The people and media adore him. he frequently appears on media, usually with throngs of people swarming him.

-Previous career as a furniture businessman and he made millions doing it. Decided to join politics as to help his ailing, radical hometown (remember Abu Bakara Bashir?) to prosperity.

So there, among the highlights of his achievements and aspirations. And yes, he’d be running for presidential election comes July 9th. This year is surely an interesting year in Jakarta politics. I am of course, intrigued and excited. All the best Pak Jokowi.