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his week, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono met with several  retired generals, his former colleagues in the military, at the State Palace. This event sparked speculation, including the possibility that they discussed who they should endorse in next year’s presidential election.

One of them even came up with a list, made available to the public, of people who could replace Yudhoyono next year, while another was quite confident that the nation was calling him to take over the presidency from Yudhoyono.

On Monday, Yudhoyono, a retired army general, met with Lt. Gen. (ret.) Prabowo Subianto. The former son-in-law of former president Soeharto and the son of the highly respected economist, Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, still has ambitions to contest next year’s election. He believes his Great Indonesia Movement (Gerindra) Party will get a far better result in next year’s legislative election. In 2009, Gerindra only received 4.46 percent of the vote.

In the 2009 presidential election, Yudhoyono and Vice President Boediono easily defeated Megawati Soekarnoputri and Prabowo. Next year, Prabowo hopes his party will get enough seats in the House of Representatives to enable him to run for president without having to form a coalition with another party. Several media sources have reported that Yudho-yono has expressed support for Prabowo, but did not mention whether his Democratic Party would also endorse Prabowo as its candidate in the race.

“The President said in the meeting that anyone planning to run for president must be down-to-earth and listen to the people’s wishes,” Prabowo said, as quoted by The Jakarta Post last Wednesday.

Public perception of Prabawo, however, is often influenced by his record of alleged human rights abuses during Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor (now Timor Leste) and before and around the fall of Soeharto in May 1998.

It was just a coincidence that on the same day he met with Yudhoyono, Hercules Rozatio Marshal and his gang were arrested by police for allegedly using violence to coerce money from people in West Jakarta.

Prabowo, who befriended Hercules during Timor Leste’s colonial era, openly admitted his emotional connection with the notorious gangster. As if it reflected his own image, Prabowo said, “It is true that Hercules has a [bad] image, but he can change it,” when questioned by journalists after meeting with the President.

As if to counter Prabowo’s visit to the Presidential Palace, seven retired generals, some of them taking a different stance from him, met with Yudhoyono on Wednesday. They raised a few names, including Jakarta Governor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, on their short list of potential leaders of the country. They argued that Jokowi was the most popular candidate according to most pollsters.

Many newspapers, TV and radio stations put Wednesday’s meeting as their headline story, as if the seven generals and the President would play a key role in determining who will be Indonesia’s seventh president next year. Under Soeharto’s 32-year rule, such a meeting would have grabbed nationwide attention because the military at that time had the final say on most aspects of life in the nation. But now?

Let us sing the song of Christina Perri , “Jar of Hearts”, because it can be used as a strong reminder for the generals and also for the President that it is an illusion if they still think the military and its generals have the final say on the country. That was a matter of the past. They are totally wrong to conclude that Indonesians still need leadership guidance. Now, Indonesia is the world’s third-largest democracy after India and the United States.

Let us sing the last paragraph of Perri’s song:

And who do you think you are, running ‘round leaving scars? Collecting your jar of hearts, tearing love apart
You’re gonna catch a cold from the ice inside your soul Don’t come back to me, don’t come back at all

Who do you think you are?

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About 1.2 billion Catholics around the world were joyful on Wednesday after the Vatican announced that they had a new leader: Pope Francis, a cardinal from Argentina. For the last eight years, they were led by Pope Benedict XVI, who replaced the hugely popular Pope John Paul II, who had passed away in 2005. The German pope retired last month and he lived under the shadow of John Paul II during his papacy.

Many people in Argentina described the new Pope Francis as the champion of the poor. There are high expectations among Catholics that their spiritual lives will be under the guidance of a beloved father who will do everything to ensure that they are all on the right track in their journeys in this world and the afterlife.

The Catholic Church, along with other religions, is facing various problems: Many people have left the church because the rituals are too boring, and they have lost respect for the hierarchy because many priests and even bishops
committed sexual crimes against children and the church covered them up. Corruption is another serious problem.

Habemus Papam! (We have a Pope). The world, especially in interreligious relations, will hopefully have a much more conducive atmosphere with the presence of Pope Francis.

— Kornelius Purba