KJ slams ‘banana republic’ Indonesia over severe haze

PETALING JAYA: Former minister Khairy Jamaluddin has slammed Indonesia for failing to prevent forest and land fires in Kalimantan, resulting in the severe bout of haze affecting Malaysia, especially Sarawak.

Khairy blamed the fires on weak enforcement on the ground by Indonesian authorities, as well as the country’s weak record in prosecuting environmental offences.

“I apologise firstly to my friends in Indonesia, but unfortunately, we live next to a proper third world country.

“I’m not saying that we don’t have problems when it comes to enforcement, but this is a proper, proper banana republic,” he said on the latest episode of the “Keluar Sekejap” podcast.

The former Rembau MP said prosecution of environmental offences like land clearing through burning often take years, while Jakarta’s response to the issue has been rather passive and reactive.

“They extinguish the fires and conduct cloud-seeding while the real structural causes of the problem, such as weak enforcement, the lack of action against corporations, and land clearing via burning, proceed as normal,” he said.

Indonesian environmental group Walhi previously said the fires in Indonesia were largely caused by deforestation to make way for palm oil plantations, mines, and other land-clearing activities.

The NGO said this leaves the land dry and vulnerable to combustion, and worsened by El Nino.

The air quality in Serian, Sarawak, has reached emergency levels with the air pollutant index there reaching 521.

Asean has failed to curb haze

Khairy also criticised Asean for failing to handle this recurrent issue of haze, which affects the health of hundreds of millions of residents in Southeast Asia.

The former Umno Youth chief said the regional bloc’s Transboundary Haze Agreement, which was also signed by Jakarta, had no teeth or element of enforcement or accountability to curb haze.

“The agreement is about cooperation, information sharing, capacity building, and scientific research. It has nothing about sanctions, penalties or punishments for countries or companies (that had a hand in causing the fires that resulted in the haze).

“This means we can’t take action against companies where the haze is taking place,” he said, adding that the other issue was the principle of non-interference among Asean member states.

Khairy pointed out that Malaysia and Singapore had tried to enforce transboundary haze laws in the past by allowing civil action to be taken against companies linked to forest and land fires.

However, he said, enforcement on firms in Indonesia has been largely symbolic.

“Because of all these reasons that cause this yearly issue, I don’t see any resolution or end to the problem,” he said.