COMMENT Indonesia switches off
Olympics, politics By Gary LaMoshi
DENPASAR, Bali - From the jungles of Sumatra to
the high cultures of Yogjakarta and Bali to the
fashionable penis gourds of Papua, Indonesia has
innumerable charms with which to lure visitors. For the
next two weeks, it has one more: Indonesia is not
broadcasting the Athens 2004 Olympic Games. The
country's 10 television networks wouldn't pay the price
for broadcast rights demanded by the International
Olympic Committee (IOC), a group that makes Indonesian
politicians look incorruptible. If you're looking for a
respite from the relentless hype, enter this
NOlympic village.
Indonesia stands out
among the 220 Olympic participants as one not
telecasting the Games. The archipelago has sent 39
athletes to Athens to compete in 14 sports. Weightlifter
Raema Lisa Rumbewas has already claimed a silver medal
in the women's 53-kilogram class. Yet except for a
relative handful of households around Jakarta linked to
cable television (rather than the more widely available
satellite option), Indonesia's 238 million people
couldn't watch Rumbewas' medal-winning lift. They've
been reduced to relying on news media for their Olympic
updates.
In a way, that's fitting. The Athens
Olympics advertise a return to the "true spirit of the
Games", and back in the spirited days of Themistocles
and Pericles, the Olympics were not televised. The next
step for Indonesia is to have Pheidippides - the
original Marathon medalist - deliver the results.
Ancient grounds There is another
historic reason the Olympics are off the screen in
Indonesia: money.
IOC's regional rights agent
reportedly gave Indonesian broadcasters - nine private
and one state-owned - a last-minute offer of US$900,000
for the rights. That price represented a "big discount"
from the original sticker and 25% off the $1.2 million
that network Rajawali Citra Televisi Indonesia (RCTI)
shelled out for the 2000 Olympic Games from Sydney. But
even at that cut rate, none of Indonesia's networks
picked up the torch.
It's not that Indonesian
stations won't pay big sums for coveted sports
programming. RCTI forked over $5 million to telecast
soccer's 2002 World Cup. The network got plenty of
viewers for Euro 2004 soccer matches, shown live, even
during the middle of the Indonesian night. Some
observers attributed voters arriving late for the July 5
presidential balloting to a Euro 2004 contest the night
before.
Because of the time difference between
Indonesia and Greece, showing events live would have
meant burning the midnight airwaves again. (Showing
events on tape would mean significantly more local
production work and, most likely, a less appealing
program.) But broadcasters contended that the Athens
Olympics would fall short of the allure of world-class
soccer. Networks and, more important, sponsors didn't
expect Indonesian viewers to change their sleep patterns
for the 200-meter butterfly the way they did for Real
Madrid's French star Zinedine Zidane. Welcome to
NOlympic Village.
Wanted: A
hero Indonesian politicians and sports mandarins
reacted to the Olympic blackout by scolding broadcasters
for being interested only in making money and denying
Indonesia's children the opportunity to see real heroes
in action. They have a point, since there are no heroes
to be found among national officials.
But the
broadcasters appear to have correctly measured the
public pulse. Indonesians by and large have greeted the
NOlympics with a resounding yawn, without the
need to stay up late for live pictures from Athens. At
Sanur's Lazer Sports Bar in Bali, the boards at the
entrance list a full menu of English Premier League
action and other non-Olympic treats. "Tidak
peduli," Agus the bartender says of the quadrennial
games, meaning "I don't care." Even if someone from
Indonesia wins, he says, he still has to work.
Indonesia's Olympic ennui is another example of
the rakyat, the people, running far ahead of the
politicians. On Sunday, while Rumbewas was winning her
medal, the Golkar party was announcing its endorsement
of President Megawati Sukarnoputri in the presidential
runoff election set for September 20. Each event carries
rich ironies.
In a country where many people's
daily rice depends on how much they can lift, Rumbewas
competing for trinkets, thanks in part to government
subsidies, mocks real-life drama. That's not to
denigrate the nobility of this young woman's achievement
or her dedication, but simply to observe that it doesn't
fit easily with Indonesian realities.
Let the
games end The alliance between Megawati and
Golkar is a far uglier spectacle, devoid of both the
human grace of athletic achievement and the grit of real
life. Golkar was the political vehicle of disgraced
president Suharto's authoritarian kleptocracy. Though
Golkar has tried to distance itself from that history,
the party nominated Suharto's last military chief of
staff, General Wiranto, as its presidential
candidate.
Wiranto finished third in July 5
presidential voting, behind his former military
subordinate Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Megawati. Only
those top two advanced to the runoff. Last week, Wiranto
lost a court challenge to the voting results that
presented so little evidence to back allegations of
millions of missing votes it seemed less like a serious
legal case and more like a midnight fishing expedition,
casting in the dark to see if the judges' politics or
price would get a nibble.
Megawati came to
office as the symbol of opposition to Suharto, carrying
the aspirations of the people who lift or push or pedal
for a living. But since ascending to the presidency in
2001, she's offered little reform or leadership while
laying out the welcome mat for Suharto's old guard.
Golkar's endorsement is the final step in Megawati's
transformation from reformer to traitor.
The
real irony, though, is not the coalition but that these
politicians are still flattering themselves that their
dalliances matter. The voters have as little interest in
these games as they do in the Olympics. Expect a
gold-medal performance from Indonesia's rakyat in
the far more important contest on September 20.
Gary LaMoshi has worked as a broadcast
producer and print writer and editor in the United
States and Asia. He moved to Hong Kong in 1995 and now
splits his time between there and Indonesia.
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