Wagging the gecko's tail: The art of distraction

Meidyatama Suryodiningrat ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Tue, 11/10/2009 12:24 PM  |  Headlines

When faced with thwarting crisis, complicate and confuse to obfuscate the original problem. A cynical political maneuver manufactured to defuse public opinion, prevent broad coalitions.

The shield of misdirection, the art of distraction.

As effective in modern politics as it was in the age of Sun Tzu: "All warfare is based on deception."

Whether it be Indonesia's Truth and Friendship Commission to redefine accountability for rights abuses in East Timor, or Sukarno's anticolonialist rant of New Emerging Forces to mollify failed economic policies at home.

Can't bear the truth?

Expose a bigger controversy. A distraction easily communicable and understood by the public. Provocation mandatory. Veracity unnecessary.

Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy trial clouded the tussle within Malaysia's political elite, while Republican Party master strategist Karl Rove put gay marriage on the ballot in US swing states in 2004 to push conservatives to re-elect George W. Bush despite doubt over Iraq.

Its application veiling all manner of sins.

The same way the nation became preoccupied with the pornography law or why local officials and councilors applied sharia bylaws: To conceal their inability to tackle the more important issues - health, education and welfare.

Since the swell of public outrage peaked and the detention of Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) deputies Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra M. Hamzah was suspended last week, familiar patterns have emerged.

Whether by design or an act of desperation, we'll never know.

The first step of "complication" has been set in motion.

Present as many twists as there are sudden turns in convoluted propinquity before being led down a dead-end ally. Ordinarily this first step is sufficient to pacify an attention-deficit audience who give up in bewilderment.

Not so this time.

Instead of information mayhem, the mainstream media - this newspaper included - filled the void of police and prosecutors by properly framing the plot and exposing discrepancies usually taken at face value.

The second step, executed concurrently with the first, is to exaggerate.

Widen the cast of characters from the mundane to central actors.

Notice the expanding cast list to include even the most innocuous. Everyone is suddenly involved, the living and the dead.

Naming the likes of former forestry minister M.S. Kaban, implicated in a separate suspected case by the KPK, should not be immediately grabbing headlines from the core issue at hand.

To connect the revered name of Nurcholish Madjid not only turns heads away from the central facts of the case, but likely had the respected scholar turning in his grave.

When the first two fail to convince, engage in sympathy.

Once the exclusive script of Bibit and Chandra, the words "I am a victim, I have been wronged" now a punch line for all who are suspect.

Play out the drama on live television, get members of the House of Representatives' Commission III to say a few supportive words on the police's behalf and the first seeds of empathy have been planted.

Like any good trial lawyer, at least plant a kernel of doubt to play on in the jury's mind.

When all seems lost, the final step is scapegoating.

The recurring Indonesian excuse of oknum (rogue individuals) exonerating institutional culpability.

The ultimate intent not to abolish guilt, but sequester liability by saying that the whole is not a sum of its part.

Heads will fall in this unsavory case. Reputations tarnished. But justice is not the satisfaction of punishing officers or immoral businessmen whose names few will remember in six months' time.

The objective in strengthening the will and institutional tools to fight corruption, not just the primary objective, but the only one in this context. The cast of high-ranking characters judged not on the hard evidence of their involvement, but the circumstantial complicity of their attitude toward the case.

Beware the tools of misdirection and exaggeration. An effort to exhaust public opinion from the art of critical thinking toward conceding in the art of distraction.

The crocodile acting like a gecko's tail: Even when separated from its body, the tail wriggles and writhes as the body safely disappears.

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