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? ***

The Jakarta Post, August 23, 2008

By: Andika Putraditama

What is really at stake now is not just the power of the government, or the next presidency. It is our democracy that is at stake.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is the twilight of our time, that everybody is connected within a click away.

The recent internet sensation of Wen Jiabao’s Facebook profile proofed to be one unique phenomenon in this internet age. International Herald Tribune reported that Wen’s page was created on May 14 and last time I checked it, Wen has already gained 29.810 supporters in only two weeks! “Grandpa Wen”, as his people calling him now, gained this phenomenal popularity out of his recent visit to towns and villages that had been struck by earthquake lately.

The government of China has been long-known for its iron-feist approach to its people. But take a look at China now. People seems love their ‘grandpa Wen’ so much. Staggering economic success and his developmentalist approach make Wen as one of the most successful prime minister in China’s modern history. Read the rest of this entry »

Hmm….I got this ‘unusual’ article while I’m doing some research on democracy…
Quite funny actually……just enjoy it…!!

Over the past century, America has undergone drastic societal changes, and it is these very changes that have raised a new social awareness. Animal rights is one such issue kept in the public eye by organizations such as PETA that feel animals are equals and should be treated as such. This topic of debate is one worthy of thoughtful discussion and personal soul searching. Luckily, anyone with half a brain can quickly come to a decision that animals, large and small, should be denied any and all rights.

Politics are ugly enough without warthogs and other such ilk getting involved; yet when they do get involved the entire political structure becomes questioned. While difficulties among democrats, republicans, and the smaller independents are overabundant, adding parties such as the Lizardtarians into the mix would make politics simply insane.

Once political parties are sorted out, a problem they would face is how to support the interests of its constituents.

Would the turtle party truly be able to fulfill the needs of both its terrestrial and aquatic supporters, if they can even get the voters to the polls in time? The entire basis of this potential problem is that animals would support a democratic system to begin with. For instance, amphibians could see more potential for a higher standard of living with Toadtalitarian society.

The equal representation and taxation of all creatures, from poor industrial ants to the wealthier Golden Eagles, would have to be resolved. To gain equal representation a census would have to be taken of the species in each state. Since freedom from cruel and unusual punishment is forbidden already, this would be impossible for any attempt to gather information on a swarm of gnats could be nothing but. Once the method of taxation is arranged, the matter of collecting them becomes an issue. Who, other than the poor soul now institutionalized from taking the gnat census, would be willing to
attempt to collect back taxes from an angry water buffalo?

The right to any form of trial would also be denied to animals; a creature simply cannot expect to have a speedy trial with either turtle judges or lawyers present. The ability to select a jury to deliver a fair trial would be nearly impossible as well. A zebra would view the horrendous murder of an innocent antelope in its blossoming youth by a depraved lion very differently than a tiger, who sees that the desperate lion was merely attempting to feed his starving family in a land where the scorching savannah sun could drive anyone to desperately irrational deeds.

Equality should only be given to humans. If all animals were made equal, how would people be allowed to openly discriminate against animals found to be disgusting, nuisances, and even hazardous? If all animals were equal, the mass genocide of creatures uch as mosquitoes would be clearly frowned upon, reducing humans to live bumpy, red, and very itchy lives, though a person would wonder just how happy manufacturers of itch creams would be. Fishing would be the new Holocaust and the movement of animals onto protected preserves would rival how our forefathers treated the Native Americans. The right to the freedom of religion is opening a whole new can of worms, a now offensive term. Many people become agitated when others come to their doors and ttempt to convert them. Now imagine the annoyance a group of bats, well known to be nocturnal creatures, would create by doing this very same activity.

Religion is also a driving force behind violence when there are opposing views. A holy war between the Cat-tholics and Mouse-lims could erupt at any moment! Even greater problems could occur when some of the more violent religions oppress the more peaceful religions such as Bird-ism. On the lighter side of the issue, if animals were denied the right to politics, people could continue to turn a blind eye to such questionable global issues.

As members of a clearly superior species, it is our responsibility to prevent these troublesome tragedies from occurring. If humans continue to keep the balance, perhaps tilted a little in mankind’s favor, the world will be a better place for all.

As it is, animals are used to their rights being neglected, because they do live in a kingdom, not a democracy.