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The true new normal: Why Indonesians are sick of flimsy lockdowns
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Local gathering: Crowds at a Chinese New Year celebration in Surakarta, Central Java, earlier this month. The country's lax attitudes to pandemic restrictions have drawn criticism. (kompas.com/Fristin Intan) (Kompas.com/Fristin Intan)
Despite the looming threat of the Omicron variant, Indonesians are becoming less vigilant and eschewing lockdowns. Why?
It seemed like simple mathematics. As the Omicron variant raged through the country, case numbers soared into the tens of thousands, and public restrictions were tightened, Indonesians should have found themselves in a state of high alert but many seem to not have gotten the memo.
“Public places are open and the hand-washing stations in front of them have run dry,” observed Azhari Ayub, an award-winning author based in Banda Aceh. “In most places, they don’t even check our temperature anymore. It’s as if there’s no pandemic.”
Azhari is not alone in observing this declining sense of crisis. On Feb. 4, as reported by Kompas.com, a spokesperson for Jakarta’s Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) stated that his team had broken up 170 events during the month of January because of crowd control concerns. In late January, thousands of maskless concertgoers attended a performance by musicians Tri Suaka and Nabila Maharani in Subang, West Java, leading to the summary closure of the public park where the concert was held.
This breakdown in order got worse during the recent Chinese New Year celebrations. On Feb. 1, a shopping mall in Bandung, West Java, was fined after holding an illegal Chinese New Year performance, attended by thousands. Meanwhile, the local administration in Surakarta, Central Java, was criticized for allowing its residents to roam the streets to see lantern decorations.
However, this lack of discipline has not come out of thin air. After almost two straight years of the pandemic and mixed reviews of the government’s handling of the crisis, Indonesians are sliding into apathy and barely concealed desperation.
