The Ubud Writers’ and Readers’ Festival has managed to pull in a number of interesting people over the years, some with overwhelmingly political backgrounds. This year is no exception, with Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka and Fatima Bhutto in the line-up.
As journalist-turned-arbitrator Michael Vatikiotis commented, the UWRF has become something of a writer’s talk show. There is a tendency for the audience/participants to expect the enlightened sound bite from the panel, and there is of course the reciprocal tendency to be absolutely charming and witty in return. But those are more the sideshows.
With a bit of luck one gets to sit in on discussions that truly open one’s mind to other points of view presented eloquently. Not that one has to agree, but it is always of value to have a different perspective or even a challenge to one’s complacently held ideas.
Today’s discussion on Obama and the “honeymoon” from the perspective of novelist Jamal Mahjoub, journalist Antony Loewenstein, and journalist/writer Fatima Bhutto was something of an example. The latter, who lost her father and aunt to political violence, had a very skeptical view of Obama’s achievement of all that was promised during his meteoric campaign. As a Pakistani, her assessment of Obama is perhaps understandable in the light of the increased ‘droning’ – predators of death hanging over so much of her country – and the incessant trips by US envoy Holbrooke telling Pakistan what to do.
She was joined by Loewenstein, whose dissenting cum apologist Jewish take on the state of Israel’s aggressive sabotage of the peace process has been hardened by much direct observation of what actually goes on in Palestine. Talking about the two states within Palestine concept, he saw no possibility of the US sponsored concept to ever materialize. This largely because he saw how aggresively and flagrantly the Israelis continue to violate the West Bank, . It seems Obama is, for him, a kind of icing on a very bitter cake.
Mahjoub on the other hand was a little more aligned to the Obama friendly crowd. Obama is an important symbol of change, he argued, and Obama’s rhetoric is important. I think everyone agrees it’s a damn sight better than Bush’s.
Personally I feel that expecting Obama to right all of the dysfunctional US foreign policy legacy in 9 months is naïve at the very best. But far worse than that is the tendency to overlook the fact that civic movement and dissent should address itself to the rot and insidious players who are the obstacles to Obama’s vision and hopes that he expresses in his ‘rhetoric’. Both those for and against this embattled man in Washington are creating impossible benchmarks for him. Give the man a few more months!
Super liberal members of his own party seem to have cornered him into tackling the toughest political stumbling block of all US presidents, the health care debacle, far too early in his term. His detractors are watching with glee, whilst at the same time quietly preparing more obstacles to prevent him exorcising the dark and arcane phantoms of power that haunt the US capital’s political corridors.
His attempt at reaching out across the aisle are reflected in his foreign policy diplomacy. Here too his ambitious efforts at diplomacy is dangerously exposed to defeat as the big hustlers in real politik (not least the US military machine) hunker down for a long battle for influence over US foreign policy. He is being pushed perilously close to fatal commitment in Afghanistan. Israel is playing hardball on the West Bank despite stern reminders. And Iran is a nasty itch that could turn into a dangerously infected tropical ulcer.
So when (ok, if) Obama fails to attain these impossible benchmarks, and his critics gather for the kill, what will have happened? Once again the true villains of the system will have eluded attention. And this is really my main objective to Bhutto’s and Lowenstein’s skepticism – by being cynical about Obama we are missing the point.
Putting aside all vicarious chauvinistic sentiments (after all Obama lived in my chiukldhood district of Jakarta), I feel it is very special that Obama won a free election as a man of colour in a country where less than half a century ago a black man, Martin Luther King, was very publicly assasinated simply because he had a dream of having equal rights as a white man. That in itself is an extraordinary achievement, and of enormous significance. On top of that, as Mahjoub pointed out, he did it without getting himself into debt with Big Business – basically the people financed his victory. He has become a true leader, and at the same time an easy target. In reality, the whole world voted for him.
An eerie sense of the twilight zone came over me when an hour after this public discussion, my mobile vibrated with the messages of Obama’s Nobel prize. I was incredulous at first, and then apprehensive. To have been nominated in February meant that he was only two weeks into office. Quite obviously the Nobel Prize committee has it’s own political agenda. But now, yet again, Obama has been handed a very sharp double edged sword.
While theoretically it might give him more clout, it seems that this is exactly the kind of speculation that an academic committee locked up in an ivory tower would come up with. Outside, the wolves in the realpolitik landscape wait and prowl. Will they focus on the dead, rotten meat in the system? Or are they too fond of living flesh? Will the people in the US take the “people’s revolution” a step further and actually unite against all the pernicious Washington lobbyists et al? Should the Nobel prize committees have psychological evaluation/their heads examined regularly?
Meanwhile, back in Ubud, it’s party time for the writers.
Source :http://www.riohelmi.com/site/?p=666
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