Dan Eaton, Jakarta – In a slum just a stone's throw from the gaudy mansions of Indonesia's elite, Rizal trades in human flesh and misery. Angry students, the urban poor, the rural poor, supporters, opposers, all can be arranged for a price.
"Over the years, I've had orders for people from the parties of two presidents, but I'll work for anyone," says the 30-year-old Jakarta man, one of thousands of Indonesians who make a living arranging mobs.
In the world's fourth most populous country, politics has traditionally been about crowds – huge, noisy and sometimes violent masses.
However, Rizal's is an industry which has blossomed since mobs took to the streets in 1998, ousting former autocratic president Suharto and giving birth to a shaky democracy.
"Under Suharto of course demonstrations were not allowed. You'd be arrested and put in jail," Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a political analyst and former presidential adviser, told Reuters.
Because political rallies and political campaigns in Indonesia are still mass based, rather than rooted in issues, some parties need to reassure themselves and their competitors that they have followers, so they rent mobs, she says.
"It's become a business ... Not all crowds are rented, but it shows political shallowness and economic need." And it's an industry many see getting a boost from the country's first democratic presidential elections this year.
Manoeuvring is already under way to line up slates, and the cast of characters is colourful to say the least. One party has the ailing Suharto's business mogul daughter at the top.
Three others are headed by daughters of Indonesia's first president Sukarno – including incumbent President Megawati Sukarnoputri. A blind cleric and former president thrown out for alleged incompetence heads another party, while a politician appealing a fraud conviction leads one of the strongest. Few Indonesians expect a clean fight.
With an air of despondency, the Jakarta Post said in a recent editorial: "What leaders we have today have been groomed over the last 20 years, and a rotten regime breeds rotten leaders."
Political theatre
Twenty-four parties have the green light to participate, virtually guaranteeing that no party will win a parliamentary majority on April 5 and that the presidential race in July will go to a runoff.
Analysts say large rallies are a certainty and some fear the tension could spur violence, as happened on the resort isle of Bali in October, when two people were killed and vehicles torched in a clash between supporters of the country's two main parties.
New arrivals in the steaming capital of the sprawling equatorial nation of some 17,000 islands and 210 million people are struck by the vast number of public demonstrations.
"Demos", as they are known locally, take place on an almost daily basis, snarling traffic as crowds march and wave banners.
What is not immediately obvious to the casual observer is that many are carefully stage-managed pieces of political theatre rather than expressions of ordinary Indonesians' aspirations.
"If a politician disagrees with another, he organises a protest," says Rizal, clad casually in blue jeans, a green t-shirt and flip-flops.
Working from his home in dusty Cikini – a poor area of the capital handily located in Menteng, which also includes the inner city mansions of many of Jakarta's elite, where Megawati and Suharto rub shoulders with diplomats and bankers – Rizal reckons 2004 will be a very good year.
"Lots of political parties and many, many candidates," he says. "I can smell the money, but I'm very worried that with all those competing factions there will be clashes."
A virtual crowd
Rizal said one mob organiser he knew had already had his first election-related job, helping to create a virtual crowd by buying supporters' identities for one political party so it could meet the threshold required to run candidates.
"Students can be a good source of income too. A recent job I had was for university students who wanted to protest corruption outside the attorney general's office. They wanted 100 people." As a professional go-between, he explains, he receives "orders". He can rustle up 100 demonstrators at a moment's notice, or, given a little more time and working with others in the business, he can lay on a cast of thousands.
Dozens of Jakarta slums and even whole villages outside the capital have become fertile recruiting grounds. Demonstrators receive anything from 15,000 rupiah ($1.80) to 50,000 rupiah each, a boxed lunch and a bottle of water before being loaded into buses or trucks and driven to the demo site, where they are given banners to wave and headbands or T-shirts.
If everything goes smoothly, they disperse – or are dispersed by club-wielding police – a few hours later.
"It's the responsibility of the person ordering the protest to pay the medical bills," said Rizal. "I don't think it's wrong. People choose to sell their support because they are poor and need the money."
[Additional reporting by Telly Nathalia.]