By Jay Solomon and Peter Waldman
Jakarta – The local office of the Crown Worldwide moving company has asked its insurer in London to clarify an urgent point for some concerned customers: Are household goods awaiting shipment covered against rioting?
That's the kind of question on many expatriates' minds here these days. With Indonesia's inflation rate at 25% and rising, layoffs rife, and an economy sinking like a stone, tension is rising in the world's fourth-most-populous country. Thus clearing out – safely – has become the main preoccupation for many foreigners and affluent locals, particularly members of Indonesia's relatively well-off ethnic-Chinese minority, who fear they will bear the brunt of any violence.
Stages of alert
Most people in these privileged groups are still hanging around, watching for the first signs of serious unrest. But though no exodus has begun, planning certainly has.
Engineering giant Bechtel Group Inc. recently gave out checklists to employees of things to do during three stages of alert, leading up to a full evacuation.
The Jakarta International School, whose 3,062-pupil enrollment is down 100 students from the fall semester, has laid in extra stocks of food, water and fuel for its emergency generators, in case a crisis forces it to keep students at its campuses.
The school has given its bus drivers special training in what to do if confronted by a mob, and has a deal with its bus contractor for access to information from the contractor's far-flung radio network. Administrators keep in touch with several embassy military attaches who have children at the school.
"Otherwise, it's business as usual," says Headmaster Niall Nelson. Crown Worldwide, the movers, reports a surge of roughly 50% in outbound relocations in January compared with a year ago. Household goods, by the way, are insured against riot damage, says Crown Worldwide's Rick McCarthy.
Many people "want to move before the presidential election in March, or as soon as possible after that," he says. "We'll be busy for quite a while."
One ethnic-Chinese treasurer of a foreign bank here recently admonished her daughter "not to do anything that promotes jealousy in others," she says. "Just keep quiet."
Open plane tickets
Greg Doyle, who manages the Jakarta office for human-resource consultants Hewitt Associates LLC of Chicago, says: "We've been hearing from quite a few U.S.-based multinationals who are dusting off their evacuation plans. Some companies, particularly outside Jakarta, have already begun taking out dependents."
An American retail executive, who asked not to be identified, holds open-dated airline tickets to both Singapore and Hong Kong, lest the flights to one are full. "You never know if there'll be enough room on the planes," he says. Oil companies have given their foreign nationals open airline tickets, plus $1,000 pocket cash, to be repaid later if not used in a pinch.
Oil and gas companies, familiar with such tenuous times from the Mideast, have taken the lead here in emergency planning. Though none would speak on the record about their preparations, for fear of offending Pertamina, their state-owned joint-venture partner, several executives confirmed that security planning has become quite detailed in recent weeks.
One major European oil producer has devised a five-shaded color scheme for its levels of alert: from the current Code White – "routine" – through Codes Yellow, Orange, Red and, ultimately, Black – "emergency." At each level, different groups will be evacuated, beginning with ethnic-Chinese spouses and ending with all foreign personnel.
The company's outside security consultants are devising transportation routes and booking airplane seats. Concerned about a rush on the airport in an emergency, the company has considered evacuations by sea on tankers calling at its petrochemical facility near Jakarta, but passed.
"Do you really want to be on an ethylene tanker with riots raging?" asks an executive involved in the deliberations. "It's potentially one big bomb."
If the situation gets that bad, most executives expect foreign militaries will help evacuate people. (Four U.S. warships are currently calling on the Indonesian island of Bali, a U.S. official confirms. Although U.S. Navy vessels visit Indonesia regularly, four at once in Bali is rare, this official says.) Most expatriates who have left Indonesia during the currency crisis have been driven out more by economics than fear, foreigners here say. Many expatriate experts have been fired, as have Indonesians, by debt-strapped local employers. Others have opted to leave after having their salaries switched from dollars to rupiah, in effect gutting their pay. Some others, particularly non-Westerners working here, are trapped.
One of Indonesia's biggest textile makers, Texmaco Group, employs nearly 800 Indian workers – more than half of whom are eager to return home, says one of the company's Indian executives. But with their suddenly meager rupiah salaries, many have no money for air fare, let alone savings to start over in India, the executive says.
As usual in Indonesia, it's the ethnic-Chinese merchant class that has the most to fear from the mounting instability. Long the targets for Indonesians' rage, the country's Chinese – constituting about 4% of the country's 204 million people – have already been badly hit in the past 18 months in a string of riots across several islands. Now, many indigenous Indonesians associate the country's worsening plight with the "conglomerates" – the giant Chinese-run companies that took on much of the$65 billion in private debt that has helped sink the rupiah.
"Where Can I Go?" Many Indonesian Chinese have stashed some money away overseas; the wealthier ones have contingency plans to flee to Singapore, Australia or North America. A private banker in Singapore says some of his clients have stocked their yachts for the 36-hour journey from Jakarta to the city-state. But most ethnic Chinese, like Indonesians, have to make do.
"I'll just close up my shop if the riots happen," says Henny, a furniture saleswoman in Glodok, Jakarta's Chinatown, who says she's resigned to the idea that unrest may be coming.
"Where can I go?" asks the bank treasurer. "I don't want to end up a beggar in some distant country."
She has been preparing for hard times for months, stocking up not only on household goods but on things like balloons, shoes and children's birthday presents. She expects supplies to vanish and prices to soar. Terrified of indigenous Indonesians' mounting envy and resentment toward the ethnic Chinese, she and her family are doing all they can to remain "invisible," she says.
The most explosive times are expected to be between now and April, Indonesians say, as layoffs mount, prices rise and the presidential election gets under way. "Safe-deposit boxes in Singapore are full. Cash is kept at hand. There is plenty of food stored at home," says one of Indonesia's most prominent ethnic-Chinese banking tycoons. "But this is not just the ethnic Chinese. It's all Indonesians."
[Kate Linebaugh contributed to this article.]