Tobacco lobby powerful voice at general election time

Tobacco lobby powerful voice at general election time

Ratih Sayidun and Santi W.E. Soekanto, Contributors/Jakarta

Jumadi, an ojek (motorcycle taxi) driver in Kelapa Dua, Depok, enjoyed the election campaign immensely because participating in street rallies often meant brand new T-shirts as well extra money on top of the Rp 20,000 he usually earns every day.

Depending on which party was holding the rally, Jumadi could pocket as much as an extra Rp 25,000, but most of this money went on feeding his addiction: cigarettes.

This was why he was more than happy when some legislative candidates even distributed packs of cigarettes bearing their party logos. Nevertheless, he often pondered why the more he smoked, the greater his craving for cigarettes became.

Pretty soon, even the money that he claimed to be earning for his family seemed to be going up in smoke. Earlier this month, his youngest daughter was reduced to tears as her teacher had threatened her with expulsion unless Jumadi paid all the school fees that he had allowed to build up.

Following his failure to obtain loans from his neighbors, he was reduced to begging for help from "rich people" in the area whom he did not even know. Finally, one family agreed to help but not without giving him a harsh scolding first, "You should stop smoking because all of the money that should go toward educating your children is wasted on cigarettes!"

Jumadi knew his benefactors were right, but he just did not know how to quit.

Unless the whole nation takes notice, among the first casualties of the 2004 general elections will be the poor and the sick, especially those suffering from tobacco-related diseases, which kill up to 400,000 Indonesians annually, cause more than US$300m in annual medical expenses and, in 2001 alone, resulted in Indonesians taking 16 million days off work as a result of tobacco-related problems, according to official estimates.

The situation is worrying not only because some election contestants attempted to avoid accusations of outright bribery by resorting to another "hard currency" -- cigarettes -- but because not one of them has ever displayed the slightest concern about the dangers posed by the legalized drug.

"If the political parties are not concerned about handing out cigarettes, how can we make headway when we go to the House?" asked Widjajanti, a campaigner for the Indonesian Smoking Control Foundation, as quoted by the Financial Times in March.

Presidential candidates, too, are not innocent when it comes to the love affair between power and the tobacco industry. Megawati has a poor record on tobacco control, and her party activists distributed thousands of red packs that featured her smiling picture holding cigarettes stamped with the party logo.

At least one other presidential candidate received a donation from a large tobacco firm to help fund his campaign. Considering that tobacco firms spend an average of Rp 40 billion on advertising in eight cities every three months, spending a couple more billion on backing a potential power holder could be considered money well-spent.

If this candidate wins, he might just maintain the policy of Megawati's government that has made Indonesia a tax haven for tobacco firms. According to World Bank data, tax on tobacco here accounts for about 31 percent of the price of a pack of cigarettes, contributing some Rp 30 trillion (US$3.2 billion) to the state's coffers.

Tobacco consumption in Indonesia from 1977 to 2000 increased sevenfold -- from 33 billion to 187 billion cigarettes.

Among the reasons for this is the fact that cigarette prices here are among the lowest in the region. A pack of 20 cigarettes costs about Rp 4,800 (52 U.S. cents) in Indonesia, much lower than the US$3.08 it costs in Singapore. No wonder that up to 70 percent of Indonesian males in certain age groups smoke and expose themselves and those around them to a variety of health hazards that will cost the country twice as much in the future as the government's revenues from tobacco taxes.

Unless the nation really takes notice, it will be possible for whoever succeeds Megawati to continue the neglect of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the world's first public health treaty, and one that Indonesia helped create but failed to sign by the time the 29 June 2004 deadline had expired.

This is despite the fact that 126 countries have already signed the treaty, whose main goal is to protect present and future generations from the health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke. Indonesia is the only country in the region not to have signed it.

Sources said that Megawati had, in fact, given the go-ahead for the health minister to fly to UN headquarters in New York to sign the document in June, but a last minute intervention by a senior state official thwarted the plan.

Minister of Health Ahmad Sujudi was asked to "engage fellow ministers in a debate" on the merits of signing the treaty before making the commitment. The debate was never held and the election has since conveniently put the issue on the back burner.

One Cabinet minister has gone on record as saying that although he sympathized with the tobacco control campaign, he thought Indonesia could not afford to lose the revenues generated by the tobacco industry.

That's like saying that he sympathizes with Jumadi's daughter, who was almost expelled from school, or Surtiningsih, a 67-year- old woman in Depok suffering from lung cancer resulting from years of being exposed to passive smoking, and millions of other sick people who cost Indonesia up to Rp 60 billion in medical expenses.

That's also like saying that this suffering is preferable to increasing taxes and prices, which would actually result in a net increase in total government revenue but also reduce consumption, but is something that the tobacco companies will do their utmost to oppose. The tobacco companies, both domestic and multinational, are anxious to see that the future leader of Indonesia preserves the country's role as a lucrative market for 200 billion cheap cigarettes annually.

Ratih is a journalist based in Jakarta and can be reached at ratihsa@yahoo.com.