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Bali's comeback blown
away
By Arun
Bhattacharjee
KUTA, Bali - When the invitation
came to the Bali Club the night before, inviting us to
the grand reopening of Paddy's Bar nearly a kilometer
away from Kuta Beach, everyone took it as a sign that
Bali's problems were finally coming to an end. That day
nearly 500 foreign tourists had arrived at the airport,
and the lines at immigration were long enough to be
reminiscent of the days before October 12, 2002, when
Australians and New Zealanders considered Bali their
back porch, and Germans had only begun to appreciate the
gentle Mediterranean quality of the island's climate.
The old Paddy's Bar, along with the Sari Club,
were destroyed last October by a suicide bomber; 202
people, mostly foreign tourists, lost their lives, and
the Balinese tourist industry - the mainstay of its
economy - was severely damaged. But now, we were told,
Paddy's Bar was back, signifying better times ahead.
The next morning, another suicide bomber struck
the Marriott Hotel in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.
For an island whose entire prosperity rests on the
arrival of tourists, the Marriott bombing was a brutal
second blow.
"My employer was good enough to
keep me on the payroll with my salary reduced by 60
percent as there were no tourists," said a man named
Boudya. Pointing at a half-constructed bypass, he said,
"A vast area of agricultural land was converted into
urban areas to build hotels, guesthouses and
restaurants, but now the tourists are not coming and the
agricultural land is lost forever."
The
Balinese, 80 percent of whom adhere to the Hindu
religion rather than Islam, are proud that their police
force was able to nab almost all the people allegedly
involved in the Kuta bombing. The impression one gets
from the people in the local tourist industry is that
not enough is being done to control militant Islamists
who are destroying the economy of the country as well as
Indonesia's peace and racial harmony.
Their
other implication, though expressed in polite Bahasa
Indonesia with a distinctive Balinese accent, is more
alarming: that Bali was selected by the Islamic
extremists because of its predominantly Hindu
population. The country's racial and religious harmony -
although it has been tarnished by anti-Chinese and
anti-Christian riots from time to time - is valued by
many Indonesians, who fear that any violence motivated
by religious bigotry can harm the country deeply.
Said Arthur Doglas, who made Bali his residence
and is married to a petite Balinese woman, "The last
thing any tourist wants is to get into a situation where
two religious factions are at each other's throats. We
do not have that kind of situation in Bali, [nor do]
other parts of Indonesia, but the travel advisories by
various governments make the situation worse."
Doglas fears that the explosion at the Marriott
Hotel at Jakarta has scared the last of the tourists
from Bali. As it is, few Western visitors travel or dine
in groups. Once-popular watering holes are empty and the
thousand-plus batik and antique shops are without
any customers. Hotels are offering 60 percent discounts,
yet the occupancy rate is dismally low. Most airlines
have reduced their flights to Bali.
Mohamed
Jayaputra, an official with the Bali government,
explains that most of the media talk about the loss
sustained by the business sector in Bali is due to the
October 12 blasts. The Balinese fishermen who supply
fish to the local hotels and restaurants have had to
live on one meal a day, and the horticulture sector has
had to dump its produce into the sea. Bali's volcanic
soil is fertile and the highlands look like part of the
Mediterranean, with lush groves bent under the weight of
small Bali oranges, mangoes and other tropical fruits.
As the island does not have any food-processing
industry, its abundant pineapple crops, lacking a local
market after the tourists fled, had to be dumped.
Jayaputra says every household in Bali has had
to suffer because of the October incident, and more of
the same anywhere in Indonesia could break the back of
Bali once and for all, as most Westerners do not
distinguish between Bali and Jakarta, despite the
distance that separates them: it's all Indonesia, a
place that isn't safe from fanatical violence.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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