Indonesia
Mulyani rides to Indonesia’s rescue (again)
Indonesians well remember the moment when their popular finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati unexpectedly resigned her post in 2010, defeated by the country’s venal money politics, her reform work unfinished. It was a dark time, as Indonesians fretted that their most trusted public official had been crushed and, with her … read more >>
Indonesia: Flight of the Navigator
Muhammad Chatib Basri is not a big fan of bureaucracies. “One of the reasons so many Indonesians have become religious,” jokes Indonesia’s 48-year-old finance minister, Jakarta’s ninth in 16 years, “is because they have to deal with the government.” Citing a common gripe of his 250 million compatriots – and … read more >>
Ground Zero Kuta – The Bali Bombings Revisited, 10 years on – Part 1
October 17, 2002 As dawn broke on the chaos that was Kuta Beach, Eric Ellis searched for survivors of Australia’s worst terrorist outrage…. HE WAS tanned, a bit paunchy, late 40s; a handsome man with short hair. He was a solid bloke and very clearly an Australian. The bare feet … read more >>
Bali’s Demons – The Bali Bombing Revisited, 10 years on – Part 2
October 23, 2002 As well as the lives of many, the nightclub bombs destroyed any lingering illusions that Bali was a tranquil haven somehow isolated from Indonesia’s current malaise. Eric Ellis reports from Kuta Beach…… IT didn’t take long for the bile in South-East Asia to rise. And it came … read more >>
Allah’s Assassins – The Bali Bombings Revisited, 10 years on – Part 3
Winner of the 2003 Walkley Award, Asia-Pacific reporting…. THE Bali bombers were rootless young men recruited from the dusty poverty of a village in West Java – their overseer a worldly West Javanese, burning with Islamic zeal and with the contacts to organise and bankroll their jihad. Eric Ellis retraces … read more >>
Wikileaks: Jennifer Robinson
JENNIFER ROBINSON is baffled. And that’s not the natural state of this peppy jurist, defender of whistleblowers, daughter of tiny Berry on New South Wales’s south coast now ascending the rarified legal heights of Cavendish Square, London W1 and jurisdictions beyond. I’ve asked her to clarify what seems an elliptical … read more >>
An Environmental Problem For Brisbane Roar
THEY DO things differently at the Football Federation of Australia, the peak administrator of soccer in Australia.
Amsterdam: I’ve Been To Bali, Too
AMSTERDAM. Been here a year. Was concerned I’d find it boring after years absorbed by manic Asia, the last years in Indonesia, which used to be Dutch. But, neo-colonially, we’re now ensconced in the Netherlands, in an agreeably restored 18th century canal-house that once traded silks, pelts and spices shipped … read more >>
Indonesia: Helman’s play on Asia
MENTION the name Aburizal Bakrie in the smart bars, clubs and restaurants of Singapore and Jakarta where bankers gather and the name Helman Sitohang is often uttered in the next breath. Sitohang is Credit Suisse’s chief rainmaker in Jakarta and Singapore, a man regarded by many as perhaps the best-connected … read more >>
Indonesia is no role model for Egypt
JAKARTA: Let’s hope life after Mubarak does not resemble the post-Suharto era From Barack Obama to prolix purveyors of punditry in Australia and abroad, it has become fashionable in these heady revolutionary times to cast Indonesia as the democratic vision for a post-Mubarak Egypt — largely, it seems, because the … read more >>
Hot money threatens to scorch Asia again
JUST 13 years after the Asian Contagion, Eric Ellis questions whether the region’s reforms would prevent another crisis A few weeks before the Rabbit replaces the Tiger on Asian lunar calendars, the region’s investors must wish the zodiacal bunny’s more rational attributes – sagacity, shrewdness and tranquillity – will mark … read more >>
Asian sirens cast a spell but leave some things to be desired
THEY’RE robust and the road to the future, but our nearest and dearest could resolve to do better, writes Eric Ellis THE new year is upon us, a fine time for cleansing resolutions. Corporate Asia could use a few, too, if only to make it more user-friendly for corporate Australia … read more >>
“Double-A Team” inspires new hope for Indonesia
Government officials hope that international investors will look afresh at Indonesia. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s government made history with its re-election. It is using a strong popular mandate to tackle corruption and bureaucratic shortcomings head-on. Eric Ellis reports from Jakarta AFTER 30 YEARS of kleptocratic dictatorship and a decade or so … read more >>
Indonesia: New dawn slowed by speed limits
JAKARTA: In December 1967, the prominent US magazine The Atlantic made a foray into the Pacific, to look at Indonesia. Written by John Hughes, who won a Pulitzer Prize that year for his Indonesia reportage, the piece examined the aftermath of the Year of Living Dangerously, when the independence hero … read more >>
Say a little prayer
New evangelical, deal-making networks are tiptoeing to the edges of power in south-east Asia. HOW to penetrate and plunder the supposed mysteries of corporate Asia? Many words, seminars and hectares of print space have been devoted in Australia to this apparently vexed question over the years. Leader after leader – … read more >>
Evangelical business network takes Asia
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Indonesia: Here’s mud in your eye, says president-in-waiting
Comparisons between how US and Indonesia have dealt with their respective environmental crises are striking CLEARLY, after the BP oil spill catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s beyond preposterous that its gaffe-prone chief executive should be considered for higher public office, or for much longer at BP for that … read more >>
Islamic finance: Hub or hubris?
Shariah banking is becoming big business in Southeast Asia, with Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta battling for the title of regional Islamic finance centre. But even the most optimistic bankers fear further expansion could be stymied by arcane regulation and lack of cross-border consensus. Eric Ellis reports. HERE ARE SOME concepts … read more >>
Crony v reformer; fight becomes feisty in Jakarta
IT IS Asia’s feud of the year, and one that could define whether Indonesia makes it to international investment grade, or will spend some more time in the economic basket-case category. In one corner is Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati; eloquent, stylish, almost an anti-politician; a cleanskin with a self-professed … read more >>
Fire rages over Red Dragon ‘prawn ultimatum’
JAKARTA – IT’S THE EMERGING market investor’s lament – if it’s Tuesday it must be Shanghai, Wednesday Mumbai and Thursday Rio. But it seems that if it’s most any day of the week, it’s Jakarta: there’s yet another financial drama to upset Indonesia’s emergence as a credible investment destination. Indonesia’s … read more >>
Indonesian reform the path to investment
PESKY corporate regulators sniffing around the business? Stock exchange on your case? Not in Jakarta, where it’s plain sailing for all manner of corporate governance fiddles. Indonesia’s peak regulator, the Capital Market and Financial Institutions Supervisory Agency, known as Bapepam by its Bahasa acronym, has rarely seen a deal it … read more >>
Indonesia’s elite has too much to lose from addressing its actions in East Timor
A friend, recently visiting Jakarta for the first time, surveyed this ugly, chaotic and most inappropriate of metropolises. As we edged our way through the gridlock clogging the fetid sepia dusk, begging mothers with scrawny babes-in-arms pawed at oligarchs’ BMWs and Ferraris circling the downtown ‘Welcome Monument’ fountain, which was … read more >>
Indonesia looks forward to continued reform
WITH Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) re-elected for a second term as Indonesia’s president, the big question Jakarta bankers are asking is whom he will appoint to his cabinet. Bankers have been happy with the incumbent finance minister, the capable and – more important for one of the world’s most corrupt … read more >>