From Gayus' Passport
Some convicts make good use of their time in prison. They take advantage of all the free time to earn educational degrees, learn new skills, try artistic pursuits etc. But Gayus has taken things further. He’s using his prison time to see the world! Not content with attending tennis tournaments in Bali, it seems Indonesia is too small a place for Gayus and he has been travelling overseas to Macau and Malaysia. So far, it is thought all of the overseas trips took place before Gayus was busted at the tennis tournament. But enquiries are now being made with immigration to establish exactly how many overseas trips, when they occurred and who issued the passport.
There is a rumour that some recently discovered photos of Gayus taken in Thailand were taken while he should have been home in prison. However, there is no evidence to prove that they were not taken before the whole scandal broke. There is also the possiblity that he was photoshopped into the pictures, but I consider the former of the two explainations to be more plausable.
Isn’t that passport photo a classic? If anyone looks like he’s wearing a disguise, it’s the guy in the picture. His birthday just happens to be Indonesia’s Independence Day, which is the equivalent of a US citizen being born on 4 July, or an Aussie on 25 April. The astounding thing is that the immigration officials in Malaysia and Macau actually accepted that picture as a true representation of anyone. I guess they don’t mind, since the likely reason for his visits were merely to spend money in their casinos. But if people like Gayus can get Indonesian passports under false names, it’s little wonder that it’s so difficult for ordinary, law abiding Indonesians to get visas to countries like USA and Australia. Let’s hope that this scandal embarasses the Immigration Department into tightening up its corrupt practices and visas for overseas travel become easier to get for the people such as students and businessmen who would give benefit to Indonesia from it.
Badai di Awal Bahagia Part 6: Bank Robbery Goes Bad and Slow Motion Car Chase
This clip marks the point in the film where things start to go bad for the kidnappers.
We open with the child being held at knifepoint, which I think is a bit more security than absolutely necessary. Rhoma tells the guys at the safe to stop filling their swags because they already have enough loot! Next, one brave satpam (guard) decides to fight it out. One of the bank robbers saves Rhoma’s life by shooting the satpam, and then shoots him again when the satpam aims his pistol at him. The satpam hams up his death scene. Rhoma takes exception to all this and gives his rescuer a good talking to. Then we have a demonstration of superb marksmanship as the robber shoots from the hip to take out the camera. I thought the idea is to kill the cameras at the start of the robbery, but there you go.
The police show up and the nasi goreng vendor doesn’t even turn around to look. I don’t know what he’s selling, because that hand cart explodes in spectacular style. These days a lot of food vendors use lpg for fuel, but back in the 1980’s, I’m pretty sure it was still charcoal. I guess the budget didn’t extend to exploding cars, so we have an exploding kaki lima (hand cart). Rhoma takes out one of the robbers and then realises the police aren’t going to listen to him while he’s pointing a sub-machine gun at them.
Through all the crossfire, one of the bad guys has been sitting at the jeep’s wheel, waiting for orders. Someone finally puts this idiot out of his misery which spurs the mute robber to action. We get to see what the traffic was like in North Jakarta back then. In fact, it’s not much better than now. The busses are just as battered and everything moves slowly, including the cars involved in the chase. There were a lot of sedans (today more vans and 4WD lookalikes) and almost no motorcycles. The streetscape looks just the same today. Rhoma and the mute robber lose the cops when the police stop for a red traffic light.
We stop the chase at this point because Ana is preparing a treat for our next installment.