By the time President Joko Widodo announced a ban on holiday travel, thousands had already hit the road
IT SHOULD BE a time of bowing, shoulder-to-shoulder, in solemn prayer and of hugging, handshaking and feasting on treats. Indonesia, which has a population of 270m and more Muslims than any other country, has this weekend been celebrating Eid al-Fitr, known locally as Lebaran, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, the fasting month.
Ever since the first case of covid-19 in Indonesia was confirmed on March 2nd, concerns have grown that the annual exodus of some 33m holiday-makers, known as, would accelerate transmission of the disease. A religious gathering in the south of the island of Sulawesi in mid-March set off a warning flare. Indonesians attending a meeting of more than 8,000 members of Jemaah Tabligh, a Muslim group, went on to infect more than 1,000 people from 22 different provinces.
The ban fell victim to the government’s indecision about how to respond to the pandemic. At first it would do no more than urge Indonesians to stay home, arguing that a ban would be impossible to enforce, before changing tack and allowing local governments to request permission to lock down their turf partially, measures known as PSBB. Jakarta, a city of more than 10m people, secured approval on April 10th; since then at least 20 provinces and regencies have followed suit.
As the government hummed and hawed, the slump in global demand and the lockdown in Jakarta began to sap the economy. The Indonesian Chamber of Commerce reckons that more than 6m Indonesians have lost their jobs owing to the pandemic. A quarter of Indonesians surveyed in mid-April by Saiful Mujani, a pollster, said that they could no longer fulfil their basic needs without borrowing money. Those who need government help are finding it hard to obtain.
Many others are following the rules. Arief Ken Riyadi, who works in IT, is staying in Jakarta. “If I insisted to go home [in Malam, east Java], probably my family will not open the door to me,” he laughs ruefully. In mid-April almost 88% of Indonesians surveyed in a poll by Saiful Mujani thought that the PSBB restrictions were a good idea, and just 52% thought that the central government had acted quickly enough. Since that poll was conducted in mid-April, the national mood has soured.
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