In the middle of that month, amid Indonesia’s worst economic turmoil for thirty years, President Suharto was unanimously re-elected for a seventh term by a gathering of 1,000 carefully chosen supporters. Over the next few weeks there were vociferous demonstrations in universities in half a dozen Javanese cities. Eastern Borneo, parched by a three-month drought, was burning with man-made forest fires. Faced with the collapse both of its currency and of international confidence, the government flailed, announcing bold economic reforms one day, and cancelling them the next morning.

To travel around Java at this time was to experience a little of what it might have felt like to be a foreign tourist after the collapse of the mark in Weimar Germany. One evening I checked into the best hotel in a small city in East Java. My room, furnished with antiques, opposite a palm-shadowed swimming pool, cost the equivalent of fifteen pounds sterling. Later, when I checked the latest exchange rate, I discovered that the rupiah had declined still further: I would actually be paying more like thirteen pounds. When I settled my bill, the rate had gone down again. The hotel was almost deserted.

At the traffic lights in Jakarta, the mobs of vendors who always pounce on stationary cars were swollen by the newly unemployed and by immigrants from the countryside. As well as the usual newspapers, cigarettes and souvenirs, they thrust forward a new article of merchandise: a glossy poster bearing portraits of Suharto’s new cabinet. Among the new ministers was the president’s daughter; one of Suharto’s golf and fishing buddies had been awarded the trade and industry portfolio. I never saw anyone buy one of these posters.

The Republic of Indonesia has more than 200 million citizens; 120 million live on the island of Java alone. I talked to eight of them about how it feels to live through such times. In both Jakarta and the old Javanese capital, Yogyakarta, there was a sense that huge and transforming change was at hand. Many of the people I met were fearful; none had a clear idea what form this change might take.

The guide

Haji Hadisukismo is a Javanese mystic, or ‘paranormal’, and lives in a village outside the old Javanese capital, Yogyakarta. During the 1960s he was an adviser to Indonesia’s president, Sukarno, but left his service after his advice was ignored. He claims to be ninety-two, and attributes his longevity and his mystical power to the kris, or ceremonial dagger, passed on to him by his grandfather.

I would describe myself as a guide, as someone who gives advice. People like me don’t meddle in politics, but we have a profound knowledge of what is going on in the world, and we are different from sorcerers and fortune-tellers because our inspiration is Allah himself. On certain days of the month, I hear a ringing noise from the three stones in front of my house. Then there is a sound like water filling my ears, then silence. Then the communication begins.

It’s my job to be a kind of shepherd, and the two things that people ask me about most often are health and jobs. I advise people on their family lives, and can heal illnesses like cancer and diabetes. But these days what people want to know is whether they’re going to be sacked. So many offices and factories are closing, and people come from all over the country, from Jakarta, Surabaya and Medan as well as from Yogyakarta. It’s hard telling someone that they are going to lose their job, but at least when they know they can make plans for their family. If it’s going to happen, it will happen and there’s nothing I can do to stop it–I don’t perform black magic. If you’re a bad worker and lazy, you’ll get the sack; if you’re honest you’ll stay. Well, it’s simple.

Why is this happening to Indonesia now? There’s no respect between husbands and wives. Children follow the example of their friends and don’t listen to their parents. Chapels and mosques are in competition with one another. People move from place to place so much that they forget their ancestors. Everyone assumes that he is right and everyone else is wrong. There is a flood of know-alls, and no one is prepared to admit mistakes.

Even the earth is crying out, with these fires and this drought. The time will come when the power will pass from one ruler to the next. But the time isn’t here yet, and we will only know when we are very close.

The talk-show host

Wimar Witoelar was the presenter of Perspektif, a television talk show which was taken off the air in 1995 after it interviewed critics of the government. Since then he has begun presenting a new late-night programme, and founded a web site, a radio programme, a syndicated newspaper column, a publishing and merchandising business, a management consultancy and a public relations agency.

Perspektif became very popular because it represented a certain something…nothing concrete, just an attitude of scepticism, irreverence maybe, alternative thought. It criticized the government by implication–I never named names. But the government started to get wary. I was called in and warned, and then I had Mochtar Lubis on, a journalist who’s critical of every government. We made some cracks, and ten minutes after the show somebody called the station and said we must stop right now. The owner wouldn’t reveal who that somebody was, but it was someone with power.

The new show is different, set in a café, with a broad range of guests, from very serious types–army generals and Ph.D.s–to Miss Indonesia, comedians and dancers. It’s still going strong, because talk shows are cheap and there’s an increase in interest as times get more critical. We are allowed to call in economists and talk about the financial crisis, and they tend to be from the opposition. Last night we were laughing about the ineptitude of the government, the clumsiness, the inconsistency. People love that.

Twenty years ago I spent a month in detention for anti-Suharto activities, and I don’t want to repeat that. But it’s so random, the political danger–it has almost nothing to do with what you do. It’s to do with palace politics, the vested interests, and it’s hard to follow day by day. So we just do our thing, and at least we win in the court of public opinion, as they say. I’m just a normal guy, but the country is uptight, so I look quite brave.

People criticize me and say I’m just talk with no action, and I say: that’s right. I’m the talk guy, hot the action guy. If enough people talked I’m sure there’d be enough people ready with the action. This is a new world. Suharto won’t be thrown out by demonstrations, by 100,000 angry students. He’ll be thrown out by fund managers in Hong Kong. And by talk shows, probably.

The demonstrator

Dr Karlina Leksono Supelli is Indonesia’s first woman astronomer. She lectures in philosophy at the University of Indonesia. In February she was convicted for organizing an illegal demonstration against rising milk prices, and offered a choice: a fine of 2,000 rupiah (about fourteen pence) or seven days in jail.

It was in November and December that prices really began to rocket. I noticed it in two ways. I used to subscribe to scientific journals from Britain, but at the end of the year I realized that I could not afford them–the cost had quadrupled from 250,000 to one million rupiah. Even with photocopies you think twice–paper is more expensive and ink for computer printers has risen three or four times. Living costs for students are much, much higher, and their fees are going to be raised. But as the economic situation gets worse, the people affected by it most are women and children.

In villages, most mothers prefer to breastfeed, but in towns and cities it’s different. The working environment is still unfriendly to women, and for mothers who work it’s impossible to breastfeed. And then in February the price of infant milk formula went up more than four times–one kilo used to be 12,000 rupiah and now it’s as much as 50,000. We thought hard about it for two weeks and then decided: yes!

It was a very peaceful demonstration, on the roundabout in front of the Hotel Indonesia. We sang ‘Motherland’, and prayed, and after a few minutes the police came. They kept asking, ‘Who’s responsible for this?’ We told them that we all were, and gave them flowers. They accused us of holding an illegal parade, but the only parade was when the police led us across the road.

They arrested three of us and pushed us into an open truck, and we drove away with sirens blaring. Our trial was remarkable, the court was full of supporters, many nuns and many Muslims, all singing and holding hands. The judge was a woman. She tried hard to listen to our arguments, but she was part of the system.

If we lose our appeal then we will go to prison, because this is something that you cannot pay for with money; babies can’t stop drinking milk and start drinking tea. When the judge found us guilty I thought: OK, this is a matter of justice.

The vegetable seller

Wagiyem is about ninety years old, and comes from a village near Solo in Central Java. For the last five years she has worked and slept on her stall, a platform of planks in the Induk Kramat jati market in east Jakarta.

I was born in the Dutch time. I don’t know exactly when I came to Jakarta, but I remember that the train still used coal and the ticket cost only a hundred rupiah. Jakarta was very quiet and very cheap compared to now, but you couldn’t sell very much. It’s much better now–in the Dutch time I couldn’t buy clothes like this. The only cloth was the scratchy stuff you wove for yourself.

I grew up in a village, but if I went back now I could not work in the rice fields because I have no strength. In any case there is no rice. Here I can earn money, and it is safe–I have never had my things taken from me in this market. I have no husband and no child, but my nephew looks after me and my friend lives here. She sleeps here at night too, and she’s another old woman like me.

If you ask me about the economy, I don’t know what to answer, but it’s certainly more difficult to get a profit these days. My beans cost me 1,500 rupiah a kilogram, and I sell them for about 2,000. So far today I sold three kilograms, which means I have 1,500 rupiah to myself. With the price rises, it means I can fill my stomach, but not much more.

During the turmoil between the Dutch and the Japanese there was a battle. I had a child, and my child died, and I had to escape. I had to escape again in the turmoil of 1965. I saw a lot of cows being killed. Cows and people. My husband died in that turmoil.

Now there is this new turmoil, but it is a money turmoil and so it is still better now. Back then we only had cassava and porridge to eat, and water from the ground. Now at least we have rice and boiled water. Before it was Queen Wilhelmina and Juliana of Holland, then it was Brother Sukarno and Father Suharto. It makes no difference. They’re all just as good to me. I’m old, I’m a poor woman, and I can’t tell them apart. I never went to the political meetings, I didn’t even go to school. I don’t have the words to say to you.

The speculator

Theo F. Toemion spent five years working in Europe for the Indonesian central bank, and in 1985 became a freelance currency trader; the following year he made twenty million dollars in six months. In 1997 he predicted the rupiah’s collapse. He works at home in Jakarta as a currency analyst and speculator.

For a year, right up until last June, you’d hear people saying that the rupiah was ‘robust’. In July 1996, there were riots in Jakarta, but in three days the rupiah recovered. The president was sick–just three days, and the rupiah was up again. They loved the rupe so much, and when it collapsed everyone became very scared. What happened, what happened? The answer is: speculators.

I know that world very well. There are 2,500 fund managers in the world, and according to the World Bank they have 130 billion dollars. They can leverage that ten times: that’s 1,300 billion dollars. I remember ’92, when the UK was kicked out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism. Even the Bank of England couldn’t beat the speculators. Indonesia had about twenty billion in reserves. Intervention? Forget it.

Well, I can speculate, too. From ’95 to ’97 the dollar jumped fifty per cent against the yen, and I started saying that all Asian nations, especially Indonesia, were facing a readjustment. I called my friends, I said, ‘Come on, let’s play!’ We bought the dollar against the rupiah. I predicted that the rupiah would collapse. I wrote it in the paper. Nobody took any notice.

Compared to Europe, this is a culture where people help each other and even though people talk of crisis, it is a crisis mainly for rich people. But I’ve gained a lot. I created a new business: companies need my analysis, how I see the rupiah going. With 500,000 dollars of my own money, I can borrow five million dollars, and I’m still trading. But I worry about the social unrest–it’s happening already, although for the time being there is no leader.

I was in the car, the Mercedes, last year during the election campaign, and I got trapped in a big rally. A lot of people, kids on motorbikes. The traffic was moving very slowly, they were looking into my car, and they nearly jumped on top. It’s dangerous for me, because I look a bit Chinese. I turned into a hotel. I was scared.

The herbalist

Nuni is about thirty-six years old and works in east Jakarta as a tukang jamu, a vendor of traditional herbal tonics.

Mixing herbs is all I can do, it’s the only skill I have, and I suppose I enjoy it well enough. I was born in Solo, my family were peasants and until I came to Jakarta I was a peasant too. When I was thirteen my parents arranged my marriage. My sons live in Solo–the oldest is seventeen, and the little one has just started junior high school. I want them to be schoolteachers–even if schoolteachers don’t earn much money, that’s a respectable job they do. But I have to live here with my husband to earn the money to send them to school.

My husband sells noodles from a food cart, and I walk up and down here every morning and afternoon selling my drinks. They really work–I take them every day, and I’ve stayed strong and healthy. There are different mixtures, so this one is good for stomach problems, this one’s for sportsmen who need energy, and this one is for sexual vigour. You mix the herbs with an egg, and with saffron or ginger water, wine, honey, and beraskencur, which is rice flour and galingale. The cost varies depending what’s in it, from 300 rupiah to about 2,000 for the most expensive ingredients. I work from six until ten every morning, and then from two in the afternoon until five-thirty. I make maybe 30,000 rupiah a day, but in the area where I live everything has got so expensive recently. Before the crisis I bought rice for 1,000 rupiah a kilo or less–now it’s at least 1,300 rupiah. Cooking oil was 3,000 for a litre and that’s now 5,500, and so on and so on.

The ingredients have gone up, especially the eggs, but I’ve managed to keep prices down. My customers are nearly all regulars, all different kinds of people–traders in the market, taxi drivers, people who work in banks. The crisis is affecting them, but they take the drinks for their health and so far, with God’s blessing, I haven’t lost anyone. In fact, I think that in the last few weeks business has even got a little better. Perhaps in a time like this people need a release from their stress and their anxiety, and think that my drinks can calm down your mind as well as making your body strong.

The publisher

Aristides Katoppo is a journalist, environmentalist, and a founder and director of a publishing company.

I joined a newspaper when I left school, and every few years there were scrapes with the government. We ran an anti-corruption campaign and in 1973 the paper was closed down. I had to leave the country. I spent two years in the States, and when I came back I had no idea whether I would be arrested or not. It wasn’t exactly that the writing was on the wall, but it was obviously too risky for me to continue as a journalist.

So that’s why we started publishing–the dissemination of knowledge, but by another means. I suppose we’re known for political books–biography, current affairs–but we are the Indonesian publisher of Asterix, that’s our bread and butter. We really started feeling the pinch in the last quarter of last year, and from December to January the cost of printing increased massively. The price of ink and paper went up by three or four times. It’s an irony that in Indonesia, a country full of trees, paper is imported–we have softwoods and hardwoods, but not the long fibres you need for paper, and local producers quote international prices. Indonesian publishers are shell-shocked.

In January this year, ninety per cent of them simply stopped. When people are worried about food, they don’t have much income for books. And even if a book sells out, the profits it generates are not enough to pay for a reprint. The industry has come to a standstill. On the newspaper, the phones are programmed to cut out after five minutes–and these are the reporters’ telephones! Indonesians are poor readers, and the reason is that a whole generation was raised in an atmosphere without books. That was the hope–that we were starting off a new generation used to books in hand. That’s why Asterix is important–the children get used to reading and they take their parents with them into the bookshop. That’s all threatened now. I used to order books over the Internet from America and even now it would be so easy–a little click, and it’s done. But the cost has gone up four times. I visit the web site these days, and my finger trembles over the mouse.

The prostitute

Linda is a twenty-six-year-old band, or male transvestite. He was born near Cirebon in west Java and works as a prostitute under an elevated highway in the Lawang Park area of south Jakarta.

Ever since I was a child I have had a woman’s spirit, and I was the first banci in my village. But my parents don’t mind and I go back to see my family three times a year. I have two elder brothers and three sisters who call me by my man’s name, which is very, very secret. I’ve been living in Jakarta for five years, and three years ago I had my breast operation in Bandung. It cost three million rupiah, but I was very, very satisfied.

There must be 500 banci who work in this area. Most of us come here every evening at nine, and leave at about five in the morning, and sleep all day. The cost of play varies from 20,000 to 300,000–recently, we’ve had to become very flexible. If a customer takes me back to a hotel, I can earn 300,000 rupiah and that includes anything, any kind of activity, whatever the customer wants. But in the last month we’ve all felt the effect of the crisis.

Our customers are middle class and upper class, Indonesians and foreigners as well–Chinese, Japanese and some whites. But they’re becoming fewer, and they all complain about the crisis and say they can’t pay so much. A year ago I might have had seven customers in one night. Nowadays, it’s three or four at most. There’s a lot more bargaining these days, and the other banci get very jealous when someone else has got a client and they haven’t. There’s less to go round and we’re becoming divided.

Food is more expensive, but I worry more about the clothes in the department stores. The cost has gone up–50,000 rupiah, 100,000! If I had my breast operation today in the same place, it would cost five million rupiah.

Image © csm2mk RTW