Looking for riots in all the wrong places

By Dini S. Djalal

PEKALONGAN, Central Java (JP): The street was peaceful. Uniformed schoolgirls in jilbab (Moslem headdress) giggled as they drank green soda from a street vendor. A man cycled past, balancing a pile of tin boxes on his bicycle. Some women sat in front of their two-room houses, chatting about local gossip.

Faced with this slice of small town slumber, I asked myself that most charming of journalists' questions: "This is it? This is the political hotspot? Where's all the rock throwing?".

The man running our hotel, a relic filled with "modern" appliances likely assembled around the time the word "modern" entered the English language, said: "Well, it was quiet today, and yesterday. We did have some trouble from the campaigners a few days ago. And before that. And maybe later today. But we hope not. Are you a reporter? Are you looking to find a riot?".

Well, actually, yes, and yes. It's election campaign time in Indonesia, and we're in Pekalongan, Central Java, site of recent clashes. And as much as we advocate world peace and human rights, newspapers and TV love upheavals and disasters, manmade or natural. It's one of those unavoidable pacts with the devil, insensitivity brewed by bitterness. We disapprove of the tragedies we write about, but we need the tragedies to occur so we can protest about why they happen.

We drove out to this United Development Party (PPP) stronghold from Jakarta, going through the West Java countryside before detouring to the North Coast. We had debated between coming here or Temanggung, also another missed hotspot in Central Java. It was a long, bumpy ride. For 10 hours, our Kijang, seemingly monstrous amid Jakarta's luxury sedans, had to dodge mammoth- wheeled buses and trucks zig-zagging the pothole-friendly road. But passenger discomfort was a trifling detail compared to the campaign excitement Pekalongan seemed to promise.

But this is politics, world of empty promises. And we were journalists looking for trouble -- little did we know, in all the wrong places. In Bogor, we passed a car plastered with Megawati posters. How quaint of little Bogor to display such rebellion, I thought as we drove out of the city. The next day, the papers reported that a thousand pro-Megawati Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) rallied through Bogor at 2 p.m., or precisely a half hour after we left town.

It wasn't my first time missing the boat. On the first day of campaigning, I drove for two hours around East Jakarta (West Java, actually, that's how far it was) looking for a rally led by Rhoma Irama, the dangdut king-turned-parliamentarian. Rhoma's secretary said Bambu Apus, but could not specify exactly where. Eventually, I found a small gathering of yellow shirts huddled around a candidate I've never heard of. Later that afternoon, a colleague said the Rhoma rally, attended by thousands, was just 10 minutes down the road.

I'm not alone in my fruitless search for a story. The day after the clashes on Jl. Matraman, Central Jakarta, camera crews sat patiently at the same spot waiting for a follow-up outbreak. Conversation between local journalists this month has been dominated by the following exchange: "Did you see that fight at fill-in-blank?", "Nope, got there too late". Anticipating violence is callous, but missing it means the tragedy goes untold. It may be hard-hearted, but photographed brutality arouses compassion more than a third-person account.

Clueless

So why has so much campaigning, and particularly the violence, gone undocumented? Part of the problem is disorganization within the parties, which seem as out of the loop with campaign rally schedules as we are. By accident or design, the mechanism just isn't there to provide journalists with accurate information.

Fortified with editors' demands but no clue, what's a foolhardy reporter to do? Buy a map, stare at it for hours and guess where the action will take place. Election reporting this year is like playing the boardgame Clue; half the task is figuring out the mystery they call campaign itineraries. And with supposedly 200 foreign journalists in town covering this "democracy festival", competition to get that hot story is rife.

So while many people this month avoid the campaigns, complaining of traffic gridlock, hawkers jamming the markets with party paraphernalia, and the chore of puncturing a small piece of paper with so-called political aspirations, journalists are working overtime looking for "color". And they don't just mean the ubiquitous yellows, reds, and greens, of the rival parties. The election waits for no one, least of all those who want to lead normal lives. Lunch is hurried before the convoys begin and dinner rushed between deadlines, even when there's not much to write about.

But then again, the story depends on the writer. Later that afternoon in Pekalongan, we returned to Buaran, the suburb where the riots took place. On the same street so quiet earlier, convoys roared to go. Masses were gathered in front of buildings covered in green paint and white stars, and the few yellow shops vandalized in March by angry mobs protesting a planned concert by Rhoma Irama, once a PPP supporter, now a Golkar member.

The people on the sidewalk were cheering the youths cruising the mile-long road in their beat-up Hondas. But at the top of the road were two trucks full of riot police armed with machine guns and grenades. Some soldiers directed the chaotic traffic, others just stood with grim expressions. They looked disapprovingly at a cameraman filming the commotion.

Some PPP supporters said that trouble would brew not at the rallies, but when they would leave for home. They talked of tear gas, arrests, physical clashes. On the day we were filming, the friction did not break into violence. But it didn't matter. Fortunately for the people, we missed a riot, but not the tension that riots stem from. No blood was shed to tell the story, but the guns, even unfired, painted a clear picture.