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On choosing a caleg

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One of the great things about democracy is that citizens get the opportunity to vote for the legislators who will represent them in parliament.  But with so many political parties in Indonesia, there are a huge number of candidates (caleg) to choose from.  So how can a political party select a caleg who stands out from the crowd and who resonates with voters?  By selecting a celebrity as a caleg of course!  To some this may be seen as a rather desperate move but some voters (particularly men) may be more likely to vote for an attractive actress rather than some boring old man they have never heard of. Celebrity caleg in the coming election include Krisdayanti , Diana Sastra, Tamara Geraldine, Kalina Oktarani, Desy Ratnasari, Rachel Maryam, Annisa Bahar, Nafa Urbach, Mulan Jameela and Lula Kamal.  Quite simply, take your pick!  

On Indonesia’s 2024 presidential election

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A week is a long time in politics. And four years since the last election is a hell of a lot longer of course. But this time around, the pendulum seems to be swinging firmly in Prabowo's favour.  I wouldn’t bet my house on it but since Gibran (the president's son) sided with Prabowo - and thereby giving him a lot of potential support from incumbent President Jokowo voters - the prospects for Ganjar and Anies have dimmed considerably.  This act of betrayal by the incumbent was something out of a Shakespeare novel and it really infuriated Megawati as she thought she could count on Jokowi's support for Ganjar. But that didn’t turn out to be the case. And she’s still picking up the pieces.  Prabowo is also galvanizing plenty of support from strongly partisan media (TV One owned by Bakrie, Detik.com by Chairul Tanjung etc) and more cannily social media, which influences the minds of so many people these days.  In particular, I noticed that Tiktok feeds are jam packed with videos

The 2023 Joyland Festival in Jakarta

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In my recent post I wrote about the cancelled Bring Me The Horizon (BMTH) gig in Jakarta and how that disgracefully organized event could have had some very unwelcome consequences indeed.   Yet despite this disappointment, at least I still had the 2023 Joyland Festival to look forward to.  Held annually in Jakarta (and in Bali as well), Joyland is professionally managed all the way from the ticketing process to the security and stage set-up with decent facilities also provided such as a beer tent (sponsored by Guinness!) and food stalls, etc. A particularly nice touch given that temperatures can soar in the tropics was the provision of free drinking water not far from the main stage.     I had tickets for day two of the 3-day event and was thrilled to see that the promoters had had the vision to line up some really top-notch bands - namely Glass Beams, Mildlife, and Squid - in addition to the main acts Bloc Party and Fleet Foxes.     By the time Glass Beams took to the stage, it was a

BMTH in Jakarta: a total disaster, thankfully not a tragedy

This is not the blog post I had wanted to write. I had long been looking forward to the Bring Me The Horizon (BMTH) concert and wanting to write about a fantastic gig by one of the world's best metal bands. But instead I am having to write about a total disaster that caused the second-day gig to be cancelled after the first-day gig ended prematurely. First of all, let me say I really like BMTH. There are few bands which can match their sheer emotional velocity in the rock world. To bring metal and even aspects of metalcore to a much wider audience by incorporating pop sounds into really well-written songs is pure genius.  Live they would be magnificent. Or so I had hoped to see myself. A lot has appeared in the media about what happened in the first day gig and why it ended prematurely. But let’s be truthful here: this was a shambolically organized gig. An absolute disgrace and we can only be grateful that a tragedy was averted. The problems To avoid writing a ridiculo

MG arrives in Indonesia…

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I'm on the way to the office and come to a stop in a traffic jam.  Nothing unusual about that.  But looking over to my left and I see this: WTF! MG – 100 years of British legacy! Argggg! I instantly recoil and have flashbacks to the halcyon days when MG was actually a UK company that produced unreliable and rusty ‘sports cars’ that were nonetheless stylish and had CHARACTER. And now? Well, the MG brand is no longer British and is instead owned by the Shanghai-based Chinese state-owned automaker SAIC Motor. Their cars, like nearly all modern cars, have no character but are probably highly reliable.  The complete opposite of what they used to be! SAIC Motor’s MG cars that are sold in Indonesia are currently imported from Thailand where a plant has recently been set up by the Chinese company. However, the cars do not come cheap in Indonesia and the MG 4 EV sells for a mouth-watering Rp649.9 million, for example, while prices for the conventional petroleum fuel driven MG 5 start from

Image of the day (14): Keeping it in the family

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Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.  -Churchill  Sukarno > Megawati > Puan Maharani  Gus Dur > Yenny Wahid  SBY > Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono  And of course: Joko Widodo > Gibran  Political analysts may write lengthy articles discussing the reasons why political dynasties take root but any fool knows that rich and powerful people simply want more of what they already have.  Are these people really doing what they do ‘in the best interests of the people’ or are they – as Frank Zappa famously said – ‘only in it for the money’?  Well, I think I know the answer to that question!

The Cloves and the Tobacco set alight Toba Dreams

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“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”   ~ Jay Gould  I was surfing around on Instagram and came upon this:  Indonesian Celtic Night Out?  What the heck is that? Well, a bunch of Indonesian bands that play Celtic Punk music!  This is not a genre I’m familiar with at all, and the only Irish/Celtic punk band I can recall off the top of my head would be the Pogues. But hell. I have plenty of Celtic blood running through my veins and I like a lot of the old 70s punk bands, so I got some tickets.  The concert was to be held at Toba Dreams near Manggarai, a venue I have passed many times in the past on the way to work but never actually visited. We arrived early to get good seats and picked up some cans of warmish Anker beer before taking our seats to the side of the stage.  Toba Dreams is certainly a roomy venue and could easily fit in 200 people I reckon. A number of bands would take the stage but most people would come to see the main act: The Cloves and the T

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