2 x 20 - 48pt Bodoni

2 x 20 - 48pt Bodoni Papua's autonomy test: The Tangguh LNG project

Ignas Kleden Sociologist The Center for East Indonesian Affairs Jakarta

The messages of the law no 22/1999 and the law no 25/1999 regarding political decentralization and economic deconcentration has been, for the past one year, so to speak, hanging "on air". There has been much criticism raised against the two laws so far with regard to both their logical consistency as well as to their supporting legal products needed to guide their implementation.

There are also still many other problems concerning conflicting perceptions and misperceptions of the regions on what regional autonomy is all about. What is still obviously lacking, however, are political and economic initiatives at the national and regional level which purposely aim to translate the spirit of decentralization and de-concentration into political decisions and economic policy.

Needless to say, the two laws have got more serious attention from foreign foundations and foreign companies operating in Indonesia. Concerns about the attitude of regional government towards business contracts or economic cooperation which have been made between Jakarta government and foreign companies operating in the regions cannot be overestimated.

In that connection any attempt by big companies - national or multinational - which aims to put economic de-concentration and political decentralization into realization should be attended to, appreciated, and critically supported. A good case in point is the construction of LNG Tangguh Project in Berau Bay, in Bird's Head region of Papua.

Processing facilities will be built in southern shoreline, between the two rivers, Saengga and Manggosa. The site for processing facilities covers no less than 3,266 ha. The construction is planned to begin in late 2002 with pre- construction preparations starting in 2000. Its operation will commence in 2005 and the first drop of LNG is expected to fall in the last quarter of 2005.

As mentioned above, the LNG Tangguh Project has two main stages, namely construction stage (2000 - 2005) and operation stage (2005 - 2025). The construction work will absorb 5,000 workers, a great part of which come from local labor force. To that extent the question of employment for the people from local communities is partly resolved.

The real problem, however, will arise in the operation stage, in which the whole production and maintenance will be run by a staff of 500 skilled persons. This is the case because the project will be a world class plant equipped with highly automated facilities. The question is then: what to do with the local people especially those living in Bintuni and Berau Bays which will be directly affected by the industrial plant?

This question seems to concern those who are responsible for the project because of some related reasons. First, we cannot forget the case of Freeport which is faced with a number of serious social problems. The people of Papua do not want to have the same problems with any other big companies which want to operate on their lands.

Some intellectuals from the University of Cenderwasih, Jayapura, and the University of Papua, Manokwari, say that if Freeport is a phenomenon of economic concentration and political centralism, LNG Tangguh Project should become a benchmark of economic de-concentration and political decentralization. This opinion was made explicitly clear during a two-day workshop in Sentani, on Nov. 27-28.

Second, the project resulted from a collaboration of nine partners which are respectively Pertamina, British Petroleum (Indonesia) or BP (Indonesia), British Gas Plc (BG), Mitsubishi Corporation, Kanematsu Corporation (KG), Nippon Mitsubishi Oil (Nisseki Mitsubishi), Nissho Iwai, Genting Berhad Cairns Ltd, and the Provincial Government of Papua. Among them Pertamina and BP (Indonesia) become the Tangguh Project operators.

It seems that the operators are fairly aware of the social changes which will be driven by the project and the social costs which they are likely to have to pay if the local people are not seriously integrated in the results of the projects, if not in the workings of the project.

This becomes all the more urgent for the people of Papua who have abundant natural resources and yet still live in relatively very poor conditions. Papua is one of the four provinces in Indonesia which are ready for regional autonomy as far as natural resources are concerned. The other three are Aceh, Riau, and East Kalimantan. However, per capita Gross Regional Domestic Product of Papua (1997) for example is no more than Rp. 4.3 million.

Third, the operators of LNG Tangguh want to see how political decision concerning political decentralization and economic de- concentration can be translated into corporate governance. In that connection, Pertamina and BP (Indonesia) have worked out a development strategy which is expected to better fit local needs.

This strategy is called Diversified Growth Strategy (DSG), which sometimes is also called Distributed Growth Strategy. The first term refers to the expected multiplier effect in terms of sectors, whereas the latter refers to the regions.

Some related aims of the strategy as propounded in its conception are as follows.

First, it aims to prevent economic concentration, this being done by means of multiplying growth centers in terms of both territory as well as sectors. In order to reach this aim policy will be made whereby non-local job-seekers are not allowed to submit their application for work at the location of the project.

People from, say Tanimbar or Ternate island who want to look for a job are only allowed to apply in Sorong, Manokwari or Fak Fak, and if they succeed they will be employed in one of these towns. In the same way other dependent employment and economic activities will be carried out by people from local communities. Cultivation of vegetables, food stalls, small shops and the like are expected to be run by the local people.

Needless to say, this idea can be realized if two prerequisites are met. On the one hand local human resources should have sufficient technical and managerial know-how. On the other, local government officials should be correct enough to stick to this policy. In other words, the plan and policy will not work if the old practices of corruption, collusion and nepotism (the so-called KKN) are able to distort all the procedures so much so that the local government officials allow the outsiders to come in and to work at the location of the project, this being done in exchange for some venal benefits.

The writer attended the above mentioned workshop in Hotel Sentani, Jayapura, held by BP Indonesia and Pertamina in cooperation with locals on Nov. 27-28.

2. FUNDAMENTAL: Encouraging vengeful fundamentalism 1 x 28 36pt Bodoni Disillusion breeds bitterness Jeremy Seabrook Guardian News Service London

You see them everywhere on the streets of Dhaka, Jakarta, Karachi, the boys with their qualifications: a Master's in personnel, a diploma in management, a degree in marketing. You meet them on the battered buses, in the dusty parks, in the flyblown eating-houses, clutching copies of their ``biodata" in plastic folders.

They are on their way from house to house, giving tuition to the children of the middle class. These are the representatives of the pinched under- employment of a generation raised on the promise that if only they study business, they will be sure of a managerial job, big money, a security greater even than that guaranteed by government service.

Business culture has seized the imagination of the young all over the world. It has brought new hope to a generation whose educational aspirations have been transformed by its revelations of wealth- creation. They carry textbooks, published in the U.S., pages of which they learn by rote. Many are from poor families, from small towns and distant villages, who have sold precious land or gone into bottomless debt for the sake of a better life for their children.

For them, to study in the capital enhances prestige - distance from the homeplace, it seems, adds value, no matter how academically thin the object of study, no matter how shaky the institution. It is already clear that most of these young men will not find the place they covet in the global economy. They are dupes of the latest fad to reach the third world, a reach-me- down form of study formulated in the west, and now a major export, of only marginal value to the countries whose young have taken it up with such zeal.

Global business culture is calculated to pacify yet another generation of impatient young people. Bangladesh, Indonesia, India are full of unemployed graduates. Twenty-five years ago, their counterparts would have been studying politics and sociology, while their grandparents applied themselves to liberation and neo- colonialism. At that time, they would have been quoting Marx and Fanon, animated by a shining-eyed conviction that they would inherit the earth.

In the process they are committed to a learning as remote from their experience as the study of Tudor history was in the colonial era. Many of the devotees of business have already been disillusioned, embittered that their efforts have yielded no tangible reward. There are no prizes, no salary, no job. They prowl the streets of the capital, hungry, predatory, angry, their trousers frayed, fake logos on their dusty trainers, haunted by a social injustice which the dogmas of their teachings require them to interpret as personal failure.

One consequence of all this has been a profound disturbance to their sense of self. Some deal with this by a determination to leave the country, to find a job, any job, as long as it is far from personal witnesses to their humiliation - a driver in Riyadh, a security guard in Singapore, a cook in Abu Dhabi.

But other able young men have been readily enlisted by criminal gangs, often attached to political parties. Extortion, blackmail, protection money are part of the daily life of the slums. When the Bangladesh National party won the elections in October, the first big changeover of personnel was not in the ministries, but among the mastaans, or gangs, running the river ghats, railway terminals and bus stands.

Gang warfare, fallout from the corruption which occupants of real jobs (especially in the police, customs and excise, the bureaucracy, property speculation and transport) are in a position to practice, do sometimes lead to business opportunities for former students in the lengthening shadow-world cast by the market economy. Killings are to be made, it turns out, often literally: bodies are found on garbage dumps from kidnappings that go wrong, contracts for the murder of territorial rivals or disputants over smuggled goods.

But there is an alternative for those repelled by a world which has rejected their attempts at self-improvement. The politicising of religion offers another kind of self-expression. The money that has poured in from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states in the past two decades has led to the construction of thousands of madrasas (Islamic schools) and mosques, and the setting up of Islamic charities, many of which are informed by fundamentalist ideology. The courtyards of the big mosques are full of elderly beggars and orphans, the sick and disabled, leprosy and TB patients, who receive food and shelter provided by no other agency.

The number of children educated in Islamic schools has increased dramatically, especially since governments have been under pressure from western financial institutions to implement structural adjustments, and have cut spending on education, health and nutrition. It is said that in government schools, the teachers don't show up.

Those who see symbols of decadence in western culture are led to the austere purification rituals of a backward-looking version of Islam. The "purely" economic prescriptions of the IMF, World Bank and WTO have repercussions far beyond the merely economic sphere: they profoundly affect social relationships, culture, religion. Many people see in these a fundamental assault on the sensibility and tradition of the people; a form of the very fundamentalism which they call forth in response, and which is met with astonished incomprehension in the west.

In this way, the very ideology of business serves indirectly as a recruiting agent for a vengeful fundamentalism, for versions of religion and faith unrecognisable to tradition and piety alike. The purveyors of these elegant doctrines of self- enrichment dissociate themselves from the consequences of their apparently secular preachings; with the results that we have seen.

There are, of course, other elements in the business development model and the reactions it provokes. In Bangladesh, the battleground of the warring ideologies of modernised colonialism and politicised Islam is an older, rooted Bengali culture. The Islam of Bengal was generous and inclusive. It co- existed, not only alongside Hinduism, animism, Buddhism and Christianity, but also the humanism of a thousand-year-old Bengali tradition, with its song, poetry and drama of Lalon, Nazrul Islam and Tagore, as well as the ancient music of the paddy fields of Bengal. This culture is being ground between alien ideologies, its antique beauty a dwindling force in lives to which it not so long ago gave meaning.

It was stated by the U.S. and the coalition against the terror of Sept. 11 that the response would be military, diplomatic and humanitarian. No question of any effort to deepen an understanding of the roots of fundamentalism; and for a very good reason. If it were our objective to anticipate, and perhaps even to forestall, such developments, this might require an acknowledgment of our own role in the creation of the cycle of hope, disappointment and anger.

In the vacuum left by the extinction of socialism and the decay of secular cultural identities, people have found in the disciplined asperities of a regressive version of Islam a hopeful, and sometimes, murderous alternative. It seems we are content to rest in an idle laissez-faire of the spirit, which permits events to take their course, and only then to seek to rectify them by intensifying a violence which we have already helped to unleash in the world.