Indonesia’s Vice President Jusuf Kalla, in his infinite assclown-esque wisdom has made it pretty clear that we’re all insufferable, whiny ingrates for complaining about the haze.
Instead of being at least a little sheepish for the forest fires raging in Sumatra and Kalimantan (that is currently choking parts of Southeast Asia), Kalla defiantly gives a figurative middle finger by asserting that Indonesia should not be apologetic at all.
On two occasions he asserted that Singaporeans and Malaysians have always enjoyed fresh air from Indonesia for 11 months, but not once have they said thanks. It’s only in that one month of haze that Singapore and Malaysia lose their shit and complain about it.
How could we have not realised this?! Something had to be done of course — we simply must give our thanks to Indonesia and its MVP Jusuf Kalla, for those months of clean air every year. An enterprising individual has since set up a shiny single-serving website to do just that — thanking Indonesia. By now, Kalla should already be feeling the gratitude reverberating in his bones; over 222,000 thanks have been archived as of writing. Because it’s SG50 and all, here’re 50 blessings from us at Coconuts Singapore.
On a serious note however, Kalla is not too far from the truth when he said that Indonesia should not be taking all the blame for the haze-causing forest/plantation fires. About 50 percent of palm oil companies operating in Indonesia are owned by Malaysians and Singaporeans — a fact that we’ve explored when we travelled to Sumatra for an extensive investigation into the haze.
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