There's no such thing as a free lunch...Or is there?

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It's official. The next president of Indonesia is former army general Prabowo Subianto. Quite how the next five years will pan out is anyone's guess but hopefully the foreign pundits who always bring up his dodgy human rights record will be proven wrong. Nonetheless, on policy making, Prabowo's popularist move to literally offer the poor 'a free lunch' every day of the week does not augur well for the future. Such a policy - if it ever came to fruition - would cost a phenomenal amount of money and likely lead to huge inefficiencies (food waste) and poor incentives (make people lazy). Another concern is Prabowo's strong nationalist bent. Thus, in the possible event that he finds himself with his back against the proverbial wall in the face of stern economic challenges, there is a big chance that he will simply scapegoat foreigners. But he will have to be careful. Construction of the new capital city, Nusantara, for example, is highly dependent on foreign in
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That Was the Week That Was…

Rain come down and give this dirty town
A drink of water a drink of wine
~ Dire Straits

 The wackiness is unrelenting, heightening in intensity. It’s been that sort of a week. Fortunately for me, Jakarta is a long way away from what’s left of the smoldering forests and peatland in Sumatra and presumably the wind is also blowing in the right direction – sending the bilious smoke across the Malacca Strait to Malaysia and Singapore instead of to Indonesia’s capital city. The magnitude of this “disaster” is staggering – there are said to have been around 10,000 fires in the last month alone across Sumatra and in Kalimantan (Indonesia’s part of Borneo). This means a lot of smoke. So much so that Greenpeace even expects the Indonesian forest fires to emit more CO2 than the total annual carbon output of the UK! WTF!

 You wouldn’t expect our friends in Malaysia and Singapore to be overly pleased by this state of affairs but Indonesia’s Vice President Jusuf Kalla believes otherwise: 

“For 11 months, they (our neighbours) enjoyed nice air from Indonesia and they never thanked us. They have suffered because of the haze for one month and they get upset.”

 But Kalla’s comments seemed to strike a cord and a website was even set up to thank Indonesia for the smoke.

 Another burning issue in Sumatra – or at least in religiously fanatic Aceh – is lesbianism:

 On September 28, 2015, the Wilayatul Hisbah, or Sharia police, arrested the two women identified as AS, age 18, and N, age 19, when the police saw the pair hugging in a public place in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. A police official told reporters that they “suspected the women were lesbians.”

 Suspected lesbians? My god whatever next? Soap opera actresses selling themselves for sex? Well actually yes!

 However, according to reports, the smoking hot (sorry!) model and actress Anggita Sari, who had allegedly been charging around Rp25 million (just less than US$2,000) for a gig, is now a reformed character (or so she says) and is looking to get a proper job in an office (she has an IP above 3):

 Hell, who wouldn’t want to work in the office with Anggita? 

Meanwhile, it’s still not clear if a new regulation will be issued by the Jakarta government requiring nightclubs to close by midnight – a bizarre idea considering that most revelers don’t even arrive at a club before that time. Following the recent clampdown on alcohol sales this just looks like more zealous lawmaking by numb-skulled lawmakers.

 And finally, after many months, it actually rained this week in Jakarta!

Rain come down
and give this dirty town
A drink of water
a drink of wine…

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