TheJakartaPost

Please Update your browser

Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.

Jakarta Post

Coins speak louder than words

When I was a kid, I liked putting coins in my pocket because of the jingling sound they made when I moved

Julia Suryakusuma (The Jakarta Post)
Jember, East Java
Wed, July 27, 2011

Share This Article

Change Size

Coins speak louder than words

W

hen I was a kid, I liked putting coins in my pocket because of the jingling sound they made when I moved. Of course I knew paper money was worth more, but it didn’t make that nice tinkling musical sound!

In Indonesia, when someone who looks well-off claims to be broke, a common response is, “Ah, uang kan enggak bunyi” (money doesn’t make a sound).

This means that even if you have a lot of money in a bank account, people will not know, because it just lies there quietly without even a rustle (especially if it belongs to the Soehartos!).

Money talks, we all know that, and big bucks louder than small change — until now that is. You see, the coins that I loved as a child are going through a power transformation to become the vox populi. About three years ago, a “coin movement” began to emerge as “people power”.

Now Indonesians from all walks of life contribute coins for causes they believe in — a kind of peaceful “monetary vigilantism”!

It all started in 2008, sparked by outrage over the unfair treatment of Prita Mulyasari, a housewife from Tangerang who wrote an angry email complaining about bad treatment she received from Omni International Hospital.

The email went viral, and Omni sued Prita for defamation. She lost and was slapped with a fine of Rp 312 million (reduced to Rp 204 million) and jailed in Tangerang Penitentiary for three weeks in early 2009.

A huge public outcry forced her release. By then, Prita had accumulated more than 40,000 supporters: bloggers, Facebookers, activists, academics, politicians and even former president Megawati Soekarnoputri. Some of her supporters started a “Coins for Prita” appeal to help pay the fine and the movement went just as viral as the email that landed her in trouble in the first place. The money collected amounted to a staggering Rp 825,728,550 (US$97,000), way more than she needed.

Prita appealed and was acquitted, so the money collected was put into a “Prita Foundation” she set up to help ordinary people who are victims of injustice like her.

Why did Prita’s case become a cause célèbre? Because it was the locus of so many issues that concern and affect so many of us in fundamental ways: health and consumer rights, freedom of expression, access to justice and a system that favors the rich and powerful over the rest of us. Basically, Prita is us.

So the success of “Coins for Prita” inspired people, giving them the confidence to take matters into their own hands. And they did, with Indonesia’s “small change for big change” movement now taking three main forms.

The first is humanitarian. In this category are the cases of Bilqis, a 17-month-old girl suffering billiary atresia (a congenital liver disease), Indonesian sailors in Somalia captured by Somali pirates and Darsem, a domestic migrant worker in Saudi Arabia sentenced to death for killing her employer.

Up to Rp 90 million was generated to cover the Rp 1 billion cost of Bilqis’ operation, but unfortunately, she died from a lung infection. People started coin movements for the Indonesian sailors and Darsem, but the government coughed up both the $4.5 million ransom and the Rp 4.7 billion blood money demanded respectively. If not, they would have had 20 lifeless sailors and another headless domestic worker on their hands.

The second category is on saving Indonesia’s cultural heritage: a coin movement to save the HB Jassin Literature Documentation Centre in Central Jakarta. Already struggling financially, the city administration slashed its budget by a third in February this year. Activists then started a “Coins for Literature” movement, and staged a concert as well.

By the end of March, the “Coins for Literature” movement was able to donate six personal computers, two printers and three scanners to the documentation center. Obviously, it takes a lot more to keep the center running, but it shows what can be done when people care, and put their money to work.

The third category is coins for … mockery! Obviously the “Coins for President” box that someone placed in the lobby of the House of Representatives falls into this category. President Susilo Bambang Yudho-yono was perceived to have asked for a salary raise, prompting this sarcastic response from someone with an
irreverent sense of humor.

There is something about coins: They are more democratic, because everyone has them, even the very poor. And like coins, low-income people are available in large numbers in Indonesia.

In fact, most Indonesian voters are low-income and often their opinions are not valued by the wealthy who rule them. But coins are like votes, and these campaigns express the view of the (often silent or silenced) majority. Individually they have little value, but put them together in a coin protest or on election day, and you have something that … ahem … counts.

So politicians should pay lots of attention to coin campaign issues because they are clearly things that people care about a lot. In fact, every coin campaign is like an opinion poll, asking, “Do you think the government is handling this issue right?”

And here’s a case in point. The Supreme Court recently announced it had just decided an appeal, two years after her acquittal, and found Prita guilty, all over again.

Coiners, it is time to start that jingling once more!

The writer (www.juliasuryakusuma.com) is the author of State Ibuism.

{

Your Opinion Matters

Share your experiences, suggestions, and any issues you've encountered on The Jakarta Post. We're here to listen.

Enter at least 30 characters
0 / 30

Thank You

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. We appreciate your feedback.