A month ago, I made a bet with my friend on the prospect of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) and Jusuf Kalla (JK) duet. My friend, having believed that SBY-JK duet for the last 5 years was a success, insisted that SBY will eventually choose Kalla as his running mate. Just two weeks ago, I claimed my victory as Kalla picked Wiranto as his running mate.

After a decent dinner (where he paid me for our bet), we chatted all night long about Indonesia’s politics. It was such a lively chat we had. We disagree on almost every matter; except one—we agreed that Indonesia’s politics is getting more and more similar to what Indonesians call as sinetron (soap opera).

To see how our politics have become more melodramatic than ever before, we can simply take a look at the latest development of it. Surely there were a lot of surprising moves in the last five days.

The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) flirted with Democrat Party, leaving the public gapped to see how easy it is for their political parties to change its course and lost its consistency as an opposition.
Another maneuver was taken by SBY who has finally decided his running mate, Boediono, a well-known economist and the governor of the central bank—and more importantly, an independent with no party affiliation.

It turns out that this maneuver has led us into another scene of our political drama. An angry voice came up from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) who threatened to leave the coalition if SBY keeps Boediono as his vice president nominee.

PKS vice secretary general angrily saying that SBY did not have an appropriate manner when it comes to political communication with his own coalition bloc. This, again, leaves the public amazed on how immature our politics has become.

Some might call this a political dynamics; I prefer to call this political drama.

Dynamism is a good thing when it comes to politics, but what we’ve seen in the last two weeks is not dynamism. It is simply pragmatism—plus a bit of political immaturity.

For me, seeing parties changing course that easily is an obvious example of how our politics lack of value. Too many parties in a system make it more difficult to hold on to certain ideology. When all parties become a catch-all party, that is a time when our politics will lost its value.

It seems to me that party’s platform is nothing more than just a slogan embedded in their headquarters lobby. They can easily hop on-and-off to another coalition or party blocs without having to consider their ideologies, platforms or programs. Any political moves taken by our political parties seem to be more of an impulsive action rather than strategic moves based on their party’s platforms.

This has also clearly shows us that our politics is all about power—well, it is always about power—but what I’m trying to say here is that when a party can easily shift to the center, left or right, they have forgotten their platforms to a point where they are just looking for a bigger part of the pie, and not thinking about the noble task beyond it.

When they have forgotten their own party platforms or programs, what can they offer to the people? Aren’t those two is the most important things in a political campaign? If that is the case, then this might be an explanation on how come we never heard of any platforms or programs debate to be put front-and-center on every campaign.

Sure they put a small fraction of time on it, but the biggest proportions of any campaign are dangdut performance and t-shirts throwing time. These two are the things that they offer to the people. In Indonesia, parties programs or ideology is not as effective as dangdut and t-shirt.

Why bother to give them any explanation on your party’s programs or public debate about it when you can just put a well-known singer or comedian as your legislative nominee? This has proven to be the best way to gain more mass without having to think about any complicated solution to our nation’s most pressing problems.

Clearly this is not a good example on how politics should run. This is not a good show to watch and more importantly, this is not a good civic or political education for the people.

Talking about sinetron, they only need a play with strong-imaging and stereotypical characters on it, exaggerated emotions, and sensational storyline, right? Aren’t that our politics have become? ***

This article was published on today’s Jakarta Globes “The Thinker” column. You can find it here.

By: Andika Putraditama

Three days ago there was something interesting on my Facebook news feed: a message from Facebook Site Governance asking me to join the group and cast my vote on two documents, the Facebook Principles and the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibility.

Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of this phenomenal social networking site, thinks the population of the “Facebook Nation” has grown so big that it needs more open and transparent governance. With a population of more than 200 million netizens worldwide, Facebook would be the fifth largest country in the world.

To take a step closer to the Democratic State of Facebook (as I’m calling it now), Zuckerberg proposed a more democratic approach to govern the Web site. He introduced the two aforementioned documents and let the netizens make comments, recommendations and proposals to alter them, then redrafted each and let users vote on a soon-to-be “Facebook Constitution.”

I really wish our own democracy could be that simple and effective.

But here’s a switch: We spend more and more money on our system, but we get nothing except violence, stagnancy and those eye-poking posters of the candidates all over our streets. I think it fair to say that these are the accurate snapshots of our democratic practices today.

Challenged by the present condition of our democracy, we might want to ask whether the current architecture of our democracy is just hideous or if it there is something real in it that we can pin our hopes on.

Our current system of direct elections seems to reduce the dominance of the power elite so that today everyone can join the hype and be a candidate. Consequently, now we have legislative candidates from literally any background — from a parking man to a media mogul. Even a criminal with a written record of smuggling weed joined the competition. If that counts, then “various backgrounds” will have a whole new meaning for our democracy.

These might be good examples of how participatory democracy is practiced in Indonesia, but the downside of having too many doors open in our system is that we can no longer have a credible quality control to filter our candidates.

Many, if not most, of the legislative candidates were inexperienced, lacked basic knowledge of legislative activities or were simply uneducated. Today we have quite a number of candidates that come from nonpolitical backgrounds, including those who are still very young and many more who are entertainers and comedians with no experience in politics.

Sure, they are full of ideals and fresh ideas, but real politics needs more than just ideals and ideas. Our democracy should not be the big and expensive joke we’ve seen in the last four months.

What awaits election winners in the next four years is noble yet delicate work. It requires no less than legal drafting ability, an understanding of how our political system works and a comprehensive grasp of the issues waiting to be resolved. Will they be able to perform well in the next four years? I doubt it.

Today’s elected legislators are the product of a troubled society. Those who nominate themselves without knowing what the job is all about and those who chose to vote for candidates they barely know — it’s like a blind date. The result is likely to be troublesome.

Consider this too: The people who spent millions or even billions of rupiah to put their faces on those corny political posters are the same people who will control our legislatures for the next four years. I simply cannot trust them to handle this enormous responsibility while the thought front and center in their minds must be on first recovering their campaign expenses in any way possible.

If one thinks that our recent legislative elections were a total disaster, then something has to be changed. But can we do that when our law-making process soon will be in the hands of the product of a troubled democracy?

This is not an overly pessimistic view or an attempt to underestimate those who will soon be legislators. This is a wake-up call for anyone out there who still believes in a better way to practice democracy. Even Facebook has a better way to run its democracy. Why can’t we fix ours? ***

3 Feb
15:36 JFK local time

For those of you who are wondering why I haven’t updated my blog in recent time, I’ve been occupied with my trip plan to the United States for the HNMUN.

I’m writing this post on a flight to New York. Still 4 more hours to JFK.

Its quite an experience to have my first trans-atlantic flight. I think the last time I had a long flight was when I went to Europe ten years ago. 18hours straight and I was just a kid at that time, so I wasn’t quite paying attention to the flight.

Now I’m having my 14 hours flight from HKIA to JFK. At first I thought this will be a devastating flight, because my Jakarta-Hongkong plane was a bit uncomfortable. Fortunately, Cathay use a different plane to take me to JFK. Its packed with great private entertainment system eventough Im in the economy class. You can watch their vast collection of movies, TV drama and news with your own LCD and remote. I spent my early hours watching FRIENDS and the Simpsons. You won’t notice that you’ll be flying for 14 hours across the arctic outskirt.

As I check the inflight information, the temperature outside the plane is now -64C. I’m near above the border between US and Canada now. Its getting freezing inside the cabin. Just before I started to write this post, I put my winter gears on to avoid long-line outside the toilet before the landing.

Anyway, my trip plan for the next 2 weeks would be packed with interviews schedule for my thesis. I decided to write about the US foreign policy decision making, so I wouldn’t waste this opportunity to get the words from the source.

The last days of my 2 weeks would be in Boston as I will be attending the Harvard National Model United Nations. Delegates form UNPAR got to represent Senegal in this year’s HNMUN. And me myself will be in the Historical General Assembly, simulating the past UN conference. What makes me so excited about this MUN is that the topic in my committee would be the Arab-Israeli Six Days War in 1967 which I think pretty much relevant with present condition.

Well, I think that is all for now, hopefully I can continously documenting my trip to this blog as soon as I can find internet connection to send my post. I’ll spend my last 3 hours in this plane to watch Eagle’s Eye.

Another interesting news from IHT:

[…..And then she thought, how about putting some atheist messages on the bus, as a corrective to the religious ones?

And so were planted the seeds of the Atheist Bus Campaign, an effort to disseminate a godless message to the greater public. When the organizers announced the effort in October, they said they hoped to raise a modest $8,000 or so.

But something seized people's imagination. Supported by the scientist and author Richard Dawkins, the philosopher A. C. Grayling and the British Humanist Association, among others, the campaign raised nearly $150,000 in four days. Now it has more than $200,000, and last Wednesday it unveiled its advertisements on 800 buses across Britain.

"There's probably no God," the advertisements say. "Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."…..]

In a time when the world needs God more than ever before, they managed to rise more than $200.000 campaign to deny God’s existence. Fantastic! Read the rest of this entry »

Thinkgeek.com is amazing!! Found some really cool stuff out there for my geeky appetite…  Here are some of the coolest things they have there:

DEAD FRED PEN HOLDER

One word for this wacky pen holder: AWESOME!! Turn your desk into a crime scene! It’s always cool to have a red dead body on your desk…plus it holds pen too. Read the rest of this entry »

Israel’s raid on Gaza, now in its 5th day, continues to dominate international politics in the end of 2008. Condemnation and critics have been delivered to Israel’s brutal acts on Palestinian’s Gaza.

Here in Indonesia, Palestine-Israel war is a sensitive issue for most of the students, particularly those who associated with Islamic organization. Students are now gathering up to condemn Israel, burned Israel’s flag along with the US star-stripped flag. Some of the Islamic fundamentalist group here in Indonesia even organized an open-recruitment for those who want to volunteer—not for humanitarian purposes, but to help Palestinians wipe Israel out of the map.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ukraine natural gas supply was cut-off by Russia’s state-owned oil company Gazprom on Thursday. It is reported that Gazprom has reduced its natural oil export to Ukraine by 90 million cubic meters per day. That amount is approximately the average daily consumption of the country which currently is at the peak of its winter consumption.

This incident occurred after negotiation over prices and transit fees unraveled between Ukraine government and representative of Gazprom Russia.

The most disturbing issue of EU’s energy dependence is Russia’s carelessness to use pipelines as political instruments. Russian “pipeline politics” date back to 1990, when Moscow interrupted energy supplies to the Baltic States in attempt to stifle their independence movements. The energy weapon was again used against the Baltic States in 1992, in retaliation for their demands that Russia remove its remaining military forces from the region. Read the rest of this entry »

When the decision came out and words were spread around, it was not a surprise for me to see the United States president-elect Barack Obama named as the TIME’s Person of the Year 2008. It is obvious that Obama was on top of the list from the very beginning.

For all his record-breaking achievement and breath-taking moments in the election, it is the notion that he inspired the world and raised hope to millions of people with his infamous campaign theme of ‘CHANGE’ that he deserves all these praises. Now as the inauguration day comes near, the question remains on how well can Obama fulfill the high expectation that the world has for him. With all the mess the Bush left for him, Obama will have to work really hard to clean it up. Read the rest of this entry »

Only one more subject to get through the final exam and I have absolutely nothing to do. So I scrambled the internet and found some interesting stuffs here.

Rec’d from co-worker this list of 21 funny statements made by pilots or attendents in the cabin of commercial airliners. Here are the top three…

1. On a Southwest flight 245 (SW has no assigned seating, you just sit where you want) passengers were apparently having a hard time choosing, when a flight attendant announced, “People, people we’re not picking out furniture here, find a seat and get in it!”

2. On a Continental Flight with a very “senior” flight attendant crew, the pilot said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached cruising altitude and will be turning down the cabin lights. This is for your comfort and to enhance the appearance of your flight attendants.”

3. On landing, the stewardess said, “Please be sure to take all of your belongings. If you’re going to leave anything, please make sure it’s something we’d like to have.

4. “There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out of this airplane”

Read the rest of this entry »

Some say that to work in United Nations is every International Relations student’s dream. Well, maybe not all of them, but at least I know that I am one of those dreamer. It has been three years since I started my study as an International Relations student, and from the very beginning, I always wanted to be part of the international community. I dedicated this post to the late Mr. Ali Alatas and his endless inspiration for me and my friends of IR study. Read the rest of this entry »