28 Asia The EconomistAugust 29th 2020
2Banyan Tough, but incompetent
I
n the faceof covid-19, world leaders
have fallen into four camps. The first
group denies there is a problem: think of
Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turk-
menistan, who fined his subjects for
wearing face masks before ordering
everyone to don them as a protection
against “dust”. The second group recog-
nises the threat and counters it with
maximum coercion, regardless of civil
liberties: think of Xi Jinping in China.
The third group, which includes most
democracies, handles the tricky trade-off
between crushing the virus and crushing
everything that is enjoyable in life rea-
sonably well. The fourth group tries to
act tough, but does so incompetently.
Here, President Rodrigo Duterte of the
Philippines and President Joko Widodo,
or Jokowi, of Indonesia stand out. Their
two archipelagic countries have fared far
worse than the rest of South-East Asia,
with around 200,000 and 160,000
known coronavirus cases respectively
and still rising fast.
Mr Duterte is coarse, Jokowi soft-
spoken: the two seem cut from different
cloth. Yet both were mayors who won
national power because voters saw in
them something new. They were not
from the usual dynasties that dominate
their countries’ politics, nor did they
spout the geekspeak of global elitists. As
mayors they got stuff done: in Mr Du-
terte’s case, “fighting crime” in Davao by
encouraging vigilantes to murder drug
suspects; in Jokowi’s, by building things
like expressways in Solo and Jakarta, the
capital. Men of action, they promised to
roll up their sleeves and apply their
business model to the country.
Yet the simple-sounding approach
crumpled at the first encounter with the
virus. As cases rose, Jokowi dithered and
flip-flopped over lockdown and dis-tancing measures. Partly that was pander-
ing to conservative Muslim leaders who
have long accused him of insufficient
piety. In April he faced pressure to allow
the mudik, Muslim migrants’ annual re-
turn home to mark the end of Ramadan. Its
eventual ban came too late to staunch
covid-19’s spread. But, mainly, Jokowi
feared popular unrest if he shut down the
economy. Having asked to be judged on the
economy, he was reluctant to see his be-
loved infrastructure projects halted. Either
way, Jokowi was hardly the strong, reso-
lute ruler.
Mr Duterte acted far more quickly,
ordering a lockdown of greater Manila, the
capital. He called on the army and police to
shoot violators of lockdown rules—classic
strongman stuff. But in practice, enforcing
the rules has fallen more to local govern-
ments than to the security forces under the
president’s control.
As it happens, local police and village
watchmen armed with staves have often
been as heavy-handed as the president
could have wished. But that is pure coinci-
dence. In practice, the local power-brokersin the periphery of the Philippines—
mayors, plantation owners, armed in-
surgents or drug gangs with friends in
the police—do what they like for their
own benefit, regardless of what anybody
in Manila, including Mr Duterte, in-
structs. The political apparatus simply is
not suited to effective authoritarianism.
In both the Philippines and Indone-
sia, confinement in crowded slums has
helped spread the virus. So, too, has the
two countries’ reliance on inter-island
transport. It has put a premium on effi-
cient testing and contact tracing, yet
efforts have been scrappy—highlighting
how ineffectual the state is. That is de-
spite Jokowi borrowing increasingly
from the authoritarian playbook. In April
his police chief instructed “cyber patrols”
to apprehend people who criticise his
handling of the pandemic. In early Au-
gust he ordered by decree the nationwide
enforcement of social-distancing and
other public-health measures. Yet he
fails to get things done. Bureaucrats are
nervous about disbursing money to the
neediest for fear of being accused of
misspending state funds. Ministries
competing for favour stand in for clear
policy. Jokowi’s “new normal”—a sup-
posed balance between public health and
economic activity—risks serving neither.
Like Mr Duterte, Jokowi inherited a
political system in which the presi-
dential writ does not run far, and only
then through personalised rule. Yet
neither Mr Duterte nor Jokowi cam-
paigned on overhauling the system to
introduce more effective and account-
able government. Nor did voters insist
on it. Perhaps, dismayed by the immense
cost of the pandemic, they will next time.
But do not count on it. Many in the Phil-
ippines and Indonesia, for better or for
worse, love a strongman.Politics is helping spread covid-19 in Indonesia and the Philippineschoose from the voluminous menu of
SnapFresh, an airline caterer, or buy a mys-
tery meal from Gate Gourmet, a rival which
sells “main meals combination” or “vege-
tarian combination” in bulk packs.
Santan began dishing up its food on the
ground in December, when it opened a res-
taurant in Kuala Lumpur as part of a brand-
ing exercise. Most airline caterers pivoted
to terrestrial retail after the pandemic
forced the industry to make a hard landing.
In June iata, a trade body, forecast that the
global air-transport industry’s revenues
will fall by half this year. Marcello Massie,the general manager of ptAerofood, Ga-
ruda’s caterer, says that revenue at the
company has plummeted by 97% since the
start of the pandemic. In April it decided to
start selling food directly to “people who
miss flying” in order to shift surplus stock
and recoup at least some of its losses.
The grub is flying off the trolleys. San-
tan sells about 700 meals a day; SnapFresh
roughly twice that. In June Gate Gourmet
sold out. ptAerofood is so pleased with
“Fly with Meals”, as it calls its retail wing,
that it is opening restaurants in three big
Indonesian cities. It is a far cry from the80,000-90,000 meals that Garuda normal-
ly serves each day, but it helps.
Reviews, however, are mixed. Zhenyu
Wang, a software developer based in Bris-
bane, Australia, bought a ten-pack from
Gate Gourmet not because he is a fan of
plane food but because, at $1.80 per meal, it
was a bargain. The Italian pasta was “no
good” and the beef oily and salty. Too bad
he didn’t get Gate Gourmet’s chicken man-
go curry. Scott Hamilton, an itworker in
Sydney, enjoyed it so much, he says, that “I
would consider flying to somewhere just to
eat this.” 7