Jakarta: “That's why God loves us,” says Aina, a 51-year-old housewife from Jakarta's Chinatown. Chinese Indonesians are the most patient people on Earth.
She shops for garlic at a sparse market that smells of chicken and various animal droppings. But she pauses excitedly to point us out to her cousin, a stall owner who she says will recount what he witnessed here in May 1998 during the deadly anti-China riots long associated, perhaps unfairly, with Indonesia's next president, Prabowo Subianto.
Iwan, who was 27 in 1998, remembers crowds armed with sticks smashing shop windows in Jakarta's Chinatown.credit: Zach Hope
Opinion polls show Prabowo, a former general who has coveted the leadership for decades, ahead of rivals Jangar Pranowo and Anies Baswedan by more than 20 points to win Wednesday's national election – the first in a decade in which incumbent President Joko Widodo does not participate. If he receives a majority of 50 percent plus one vote, he will avoid a runoff in June.
Chat in the booth is not going well. The gruff cousin suspects our presence is a Western plot, though he won't go into detail. Moreover, he complains, what difference will it make who wins the election? No one will ever be held accountable.
Few in Chinatown want to talk about the sensitive political and racial issues that have long been brewing. But Aina, who asked to use one name and is one of several million Indonesians of Chinese descent, is not afraid to get angry.
“Many of my Chinese friends want to vote for [Prabowo]”I said to my best friend, 'You're out of your mind,'” she says. Don't you remember what happened? I said: Why did you choose him? They said: Because we pity him, he has already lost twice.
“Oh my God! My friends!” “But it's democracy, so I can't be mad at them,” she says, switching to English and throwing her head back in pain.
Presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, right, and his running mate Gebran Rakabuming Raka, son of Joko Widodo, at a rally in Jakarta on Saturday.credit: Ahmed
More than 1,000 people are believed to have died in the 1998 riots in several cities, and more than 100 women were raped. The details of the events, which disproportionately affected Chinese Indonesians, are complex and ambiguous, especially regarding the agent provocateurs and their motives.
