Last week I skipped a macroeconomics lecture to attend Dr. Amien Rais’s talk at SIPA. He gave a broad historical overview of Indonesian politics and spoke about his experience with the democratic reform movement, but things began to get more interesting when he gave his explanation about why resource-rich Indonesia is still largely poor – he blames something he calls a ‘corporatocracy’ of multinationals, foreign governments, international agencies, mass media, and academic ‘intellectual prostitutes’ (his words) that coopt local elites. Sounded a lot like Confessions of an Economic Hitman. He spoke about multinationals that operate mining and oil extraction in Indonesia and how the profit-sharing agreements were unfair and operations did not create opportunities for technology transfer or technical training. Afterwards, I crashed an 8000-level polisci class which Dr. Rais was giving a guest lecture to, where he spoke at length about Islamic fundamentalism and Shariah law – he does not believe Indonesia is in danger of becoming less secular. Which is a lot different from the picture I got from a muslim women’s rights activist in Indonesia, who visited SIPA late last year and spoke about the difficulties she faced in speaking out in the debate on women’s rights in Islam.

In retrospect I should’ve taken notes since I am writing this from memory.