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Indonesia: The demons
remain
By Gary LaMoshi
DENPASAR, Bali - In the wake of last week's
terrorist bombing at Bali's tourism epicenter, the
island's Hindu priests ordained a mecaru
pancasana (purification ceremony) to be held on the
following full moon, October 21. According to Balinese
lore, evil spirits are responsible for disasters on
Earth. At the auspicious moment, as divined from
Sanskrit almanacs, chants, bells, holy water, incense,
and hundreds of worshippers bearing offerings marched to
the bomb site to drive away the demons.
The
terrorist demon bedeviling the world has driven away
tourists, Bali's economic lifeblood, but Balinese are
confident visitors will return. "Bali will come back
sooner than people think," says Kadek Wiranta, an owner
of Paddy's Irish Bar, leveled in the blast along with
the Sari Club. "People realize this is international
terrorism. It has nothing to do with Bali."
Wiranta says his hotels catering to Australians,
who comprise the largest group of October 12 casualties
as well as Bali's yearly 1.5 million visitors, began
getting bookings for December again this week. He
reports just 800 cancellations out of 10,000
reservations for the coming months. His planned November
1 launch of Paradise Air with service from Bali's Ngurah
Rai Airport to Melbourne has been postponed until March
1, but Wiranta promises, "I'm going to open my airline."
Although Kuta, the leading beach resort, was a ghost
town on Monday, many tourists moved to other resort
areas and the estimated 20,000 expatriates living on
this so-called Island of the Gods haven't run for the
exits. Despite the tragedy, Bali is still Bali.
What draws people to Bali to visit or live, and
sets it apart from other tropical paradise islands and
the rest of mainly Muslim Indonesia, is its unique and
pervasive Hindu culture, dating back 1,000 years,
overlaid on a tapestry of Buddhism and animism.
Bali is a mystical world of spirits, ceremonial
arts, and women waddling to one of the island's 1,000
temples in high-heeled sandals, tightly wrapped sarongs,
midriff-length brassieres under lace kebaya (a
1930s governor ordered an end to bare breasts, though
European sun worshippers remain exempt) carrying
gravity-defying piles of fruit on their heads, a museum
culture in a lush 80-by-145-kilometer hall of volcanic
peaks, terraced rice fields, surf, and tolerance.
Balinese, who eat meat, drink alcohol and contact their
ancestors via mobile phone, have a strong enough sense
of identity to welcome outsiders and their ideas without
abandoning their own.
"The most magical four
letters in the world, B-A-L-I," says Made Wijaya, a
landscape architect who arrived from Australia 30 years
ago as Michael White and created the Stranger in
Paradise (www.strangerinparadise.com) website.
Despite Indonesian flags flying at half-staff
throughout the island and hospital appeals for donations
of dry ice to keep body parts chilled, "This hasn't
touched the essence of Bali," Wijaya observes. "Imagine
if they had bombed a temple ..."
But just as the
bombing doesn't change the essential character of Bali,
it doesn't alter the facts about Indonesia. Four years
after the fall of president Suharto's authoritarian
regime, Indonesia's evil spirits remain in power.
The Kuta bombers may have been al-Qaeda or Abu
Bakar Ba'asyir's accused local affiliate Jemaah
Islamiyah, Philippine separatists Abu Sayaaf or the Moro
Liberation Front - the blast earlier Saturday night at
the Philippine Consulate near that country's Muslim
separatist war zone in previously quiet Manado at the
northern tip of Sulawesi implies a connection - or
Indonesia's own so far localized liberation movements in
Aceh and Papua. But Indonesia's four-year string of
unsolved bombings and other deadly violence hints at its
own dark side, the still-powerful supporters of Suharto
hoping to push the country toward chaos for their
comeback.
The country's newly democratic
politicians, all collaborators if not co-conspirators in
the Smiling General's 30-year kleptocracy, have done
their part to forfeit trust by concentrating on their
own welfare rather than the public good. Indonesia still
has not recovered from the regional economic collapse of
1997, and the government still has no plan to help its
60 million people living below the poverty line. Speaker
Akbar Tanjung remains free pending appeal of his US$3.5
million corruption conviction and, incredibly, still
chairs the House of Representatives. Pandering to
radical Islamic groups blocked more vigilant
anti-terrorism measures that might have prevented the
tragedy in Bali.
Striking Bali's main tourist
area and killing scores of foreigners further blasts
investor confidence in the teetering economy throughout
the archipelago and undermines the authority of
President Megawati Sukarnoputri's rudderless regime. New
internal security measures, created in crisis and first
employed to hold Ba'asyir to the chagrin of his
supporters, and foreign assistance to security forces
strengthen the dark side bent on rolling back
reformasi. The old guard may not have planted the
bomb, but they stand to reap its results.
For
the sake of 230 million Indonesians and their nascent
democracy, Bali's priests should hold another mecaru
pancasana in Jakarta at the next available
auspicious moment.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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