City Life | 3 January 2009

It’s early days in Indonesia’s election season, but already Jakarta is transformed into a riot of colour. Political bunting of all shades sprouts from every conceivable vantage point, brightening the grey of poverty; the green of the surging Islamist parties; the red and black buffalo of the party of Sukarno’s eldest daughter Megawati; the yellow of Golkar, the clan of the late kleptator Suharto and his cronies. Posters and promises garland walls, bridges and streetside food stalls. Some even sponsor the capital’s flotilla of kaki lima — literally ‘five feet’ — pushcarts that dispense snacks of sate, tropical fruits and sometimes salmonella. As our car sinks into another flooded pothole in a downtown street, I’m particularly taken with a black-hued poster from a group campaigning to stamp out corruption, still the blight of this 63 year-old country after 53 years of autocracy and a wobbly decade of democracy. Korruptors! Hukum Mati! it screams in Bahasa Indonesia: ‘Death penalty for corruptors!’ If long-suffering Indonesians’ grumbles are any sort of psephological guide, this ticket should sweep the New Year polls.

Corruption is a constant in Jakarta. Indonesia annually jousts with the likes of Nigeria, Somalia and Burma for the dubious honour of which country is more crooked, as measured by the watchdog Transparency International (TI). Suharto, who the World Bank claims embezzled as much as $35 billion from the state during his 30-year dictatorship, turned graft into a way of life that today’s civil society now struggles to cleanse. Current President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono won office in 2004 by promising clean hands, and for a year or so bent governors had their collars felt; a few mayors too. But then it all went quiet. SBY is now bidding for a second term and the new star of his cabinet is the comely finance minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati.