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? ***