Wednesday, 29 May 2002

BALI, Indonesia

As the Bali PrepCom got underway this week, the Indonesian delegation seemed confused about its role — were they expected to be the magnanimous hosts or should they be more engaged in the nitty-gritty negotiations? Indonesians take particular pride in not offending their tamu, or guests, and there are thousands to look after in Bali this week. But the uncomfortable reality of this conference is that there are radically divergent views on what the final documents should look like, so disagreement is inevitable.

For its part, the national media seems to be on the side of activism, and the first two days have seen the Indonesian representatives excoriated for a lack of leadership. That prompted the headlines I read as my plane descended into Bali this morning, with the government promising to be more proactive.

After checking into my hotel and loading 500 copies of Tempo into a taxi, I headed off towards Nusa Dua, the site of all the negotiations and most of the island’s five-star hotels. Since I’m not traveling on a lavish expense account, I had booked a modest room in the Kuta area, about 30 minutes from the main conference center.

For those who haven’t been there, Kuta is the part of Bali that is literally bursting from the explosive growth in tourism over the past three decades. Row upon row of T-shirt and jewelry shops line the narrow roads leading to Bali’s most famous beach. In the evenings, when happy hour gets going, the entire area is a traffic engineer’s nightmare, with cars sharing the roads alongside horse carts, noodle vendors, and drunk Australians. But this was the morning, and all the party-goers were still in bed.

I had never been to Nusa Dua before, and only knew it from my guidebook as a relatively new enclave designed for tourists who want to “leave Bali and Indonesia behind.” Even with that description, it was a shock to pull through the gate into the Nusa Dua complex — a gate designed to keep out the public vans most people use to get around. What I saw were sculpted lawns, idyllic fountains, and pedestrian-free roads connecting a collection of exclusive resorts. It was an ironic setting for a conference about poverty and sustainable development.

By the time I received my media credentials and handed over my copies of Tempo to conference organizers, the negotiators had taken a break for lunch. I headed over to the media center to get situated and learn what I could about that morning’s events.

Just inside the media center were several tables covered with hundreds of press releases, reports, and declarations, many taped along the walls like fliers for a rock concert. Before me, thousands of new acronyms were just waiting to baffle the latest reader: WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene for All) was advertising a roundtable discussion; CIFOR (the Center for International Forestry Research) was optimistically drawing attention to “Forests — At Last the Good News!”; and GEF-SGP (Global Environment Facility – Small Grants Program) was hosting something innocuously titled Green Call.

Among the piles of documents, I saw an announcement that the head of the Indonesian delegation, Deputy Foreign Minister Makarim Wibisono, was giving a daily press briefing at 5 p.m. That was good news for my work with Tempo. As I continued looking, a young Thai activist tapped my shoulder.

“Excuse me. We’re having a media event on Friday, before the negotiations resume, and we’d like to see you there,” she said.

Thinking I might forget about it over the next two days, I asked “Are you going to post some flyers or announcements about this?”

“No. We don’t want to waste the paper.” I looked down at the morass of documents spread out in front of me and smiled. At least someone was exercising restraint.

Later that afternoon, when Wibisono arrived to give his daily update, I got another, more embarrassing, glimpse at Indonesia’s generosity towards its guests. After looking over the crowd — a mix of perhaps 30 writers, photographers, and television crew members — the minister announced that he would first present his summary of the day in English, a statement that caused some of my colleagues in the room to groan. This seemed to be a total capitulation to me, the only non-Indonesian in the entire room. I felt very self-conscious, and wanted the moment to end as quickly as possible.

But it was not to be. My embarrassment resurfaced only a few minutes later, when the minister finished his summary, offered his thanks to everyone, and turned off the microphone. No one moved. After several long seconds had passed, the minister’s assistant leaned over to his boss and whispered something. “Oh yes, I forgot!” the minister replied, before finally proceeding to give his presentation in Indonesian.