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.
Democracy as a necessary luxury
Khairil Azhar
Change Size
Khairil Azhar. Courtesy of Khairil Azhar
A few weeks ago, along the railroad snaking from Rangkasbitung to Jakarta, street children got on and off our train every time it stopped at a station, all with different ways of making money.
Some sang, mostly with false tone. Some cleaned the floor, with one hand sweeping a mix of wet and dry garbage between the rows of seats while the other hand opened up to collect every rupiah people gave. Some sold cheap products or low-quality fruit. Or some just tried to make the passengers pity them.
They were doing anything possible to make a life for themselves.
Asking questions related to their basic living needs, housing or even schooling seemed to be irrelevant. Seeing them again on the same train or a different one, from one day to another, would be a matter of chance. They are like dust on a clean suit.
It would not be big news if one day one of them was stabbed, severely bullied or died because of an unknown disease. There would be no need to know the cause, just to bury him or her quickly, or let the corpse be sent to a nearby hospital for medical science.
Along the railroad, banners, leaflets and flags featuring different colors and one, two or three legislative candidates flapped in the wind as it blew with or without the movement of the train. The photos on the banners smiled, posed assertively with a fist or merely acted like models usually do. There were only a few words written on the banners that seemed to relate to the fate of the street children.
And none of the candidates posed with the people they say they would fight for.
Along the road from Supadio International Airport in Pontianak, toward a town called Mempawah, we left the city behind, to see homes and coffee houses with dim lights and lanes without street lamps. The golden paddy fields, as vehicles' lights shined them down, looked bumpy, while posters of legislative candidates were inconsiderately stuck among them.
The dusty streets and untidy yellowing paddies looked to be expecting drops of rain, God's gift, instead of the as yet unrealized promises of proper irrigation. The posters of the legislative candidates became unneeded scarecrows as birds and pests were keener to feed themselves on food without pesticides.
Earlier, at the airport, two private jets had been parked, condescendingly. They brought people who keep promising that the peasants would have better lives.
As we know, the ordinary people hanging their lives on the dried-up paddy fields might ask not for much. They only want their serenity to be unbothered by unnecessary interferences. Charity of Rp 100,000 or Rp 200,000 in a five-year cycle is never as much as the cost they should pay now or later.
In Aceh, West Sumatra, West Java and other provinces, the threat of 'Pakistanization' taints everyday life and now certainly political campaigns. Schoolgirls and women are intimidated with religious perdition. Minorities gradually lose their right to live with their beliefs.
And structurally, local state officials and law enforcers think and act according to the wishes of the majority. Local bills or regulations are produced to satisfy the religious projections of the Muslim bigots. Muslim school students are made to live with religiously orchestrated threats and abstract doctrines ' though there are many professors in education who must know about appropriate educational practices.
Children are being educated as if they are being prepared to be the next religious martyrs.
Liberal democracy has been so expensive, we might say. The street children, the peasants in their paddy fields, the intimidated women, the religiously persecuted minorities and the threatened school children are only some of those who pay the cost, willingly or unwillingly.
But we do need open democracy, like it or dislike it, at any cost. It remains the only option, as communism or other -isms do not offer anything better. At least theoretically, it is also in this democracy that is more promising to fight for those we might call 'martyrs of democratization'.
It is this democracy, so far, that comes with less fear and intimidation. It is this democracy that generates optimism even though it might be very indefinable for many. It is this democracy that provides more space to move on the ladder of a nation's life.
And general elections, to acquire both legislators and political leaders, are costly. Even we can see that they look to be nonsensical spending. But it keeps the locomotive moving, as a stop would start a riot and it would be more costly ' as the nation's history has repeatedly shown us.
In these two months, at least, we can see millions of people wearing new T-shirts with political parties' symbols and names on them. As life might hold more burdens for them, dangdut performances amid the indiscernible speeches of party campaigners might ease their suffering for a while.
For a tomorrow, hopefully, that will not be just another day.
_______________
The writer is a school consultant in Jakarta and a researcher at the Center for the Study of Religion and Peace (PUSAD), Paramadina Foundation, Jakarta.
