Bali atrocity a full-frontal attack
The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Singapore
Singaporeans will have two questions on their minds as they take in the full meaning of the Bali bomb attack. The Sept. 11 strikes on New York had been like distant thunder for most, almost surreal, despite the scale of the enormity. But Bali has been full-frontal, very much door-step. Danger never was this close to home.
The Jakarta media has branded the bombing Indonesia's 9/11 -- for its anticipated impact on the populace and the body politic, and how it may finally change the leaders' thinking on internal threats.
If the atrocity has shaken the political leadership and security establishment out of their reverie, the Indonesian people and Southeast Asians as a whole will, by extension, need to contemplate the after-shocks of the event.
Singaporeans will be anxious to know if the country's recovery, set back a bit by the weak third-quarter growth estimates released last week, will be shaken by the consequences of the Bali incident. They will also wonder about their physical vulnerability: Will security, hitherto unobtrusive, get intrusive to the point where paranoia sets in?
On the first point, trend-spotters (among them economists who got the third-quarter estimates so woefully wrong) and businessmen will instinctively worry about investment flows from abroad, next to local business sentiment and consumer confidence.
These shifts need not be captive to what will happen in Indonesian markets in the short term. Analysts there polled the day after the Bali attacks said bearish sentiment would stimulate inflation and capital flight in anticipation of instability. They feared a fall in the rupiah would worsen inflationary pressures and force the central bank to raise benchmark rates, which in turn would endanger the recovery by choking off lending.
The damage could be contained if the rupiah fell to no more than 9,500 to the American dollar, they said. But, as if to confirm their fears, the Jakarta stockmarket fell 11 per cent Monday, the biggest one-day fall in four years.
Yet, the impact could be easily exaggerated. A two- or three- week trend-line would be a better indicator. Singaporeans' salvation is that the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis taught overseas investors and fund-managers that Singapore was an economy apart from the pall that had settled on the region. There is no suggestion in country-risk analyses of late that the distinction has become blurred in the intervening four years, much less discounted.
Provided there is no repeat of Bali-scale attacks, on the island itself or elsewhere in Indonesia, and President Megawati Soekarnoputri's government acts swiftly to get to the bottom of the conspiracy (she has said she will), Singaporeans would be justified in maintaining measured confidence.
As for security, there is an expectation there would be more random checks and uniformed personnel will be more visible. More arrests of subversive suspects are not unlikely.
As in the past, the people's faith in the ability of the security apparatus to steer them safely through a perilous period remains high. The people should go about their normal business.
But it pays to be alert and to report suspicious activity and behavior. After it was disclosed by the Home Affairs Ministry that the Yishun MRT station had been targeted by Jemaah Islamiyah operatives, following the first wave of arrests last year, traffic out of the station was markedly thin the day after. Within 48 hours, it was normal again. Singaporeans are irrepressible people.