W

hile a lot of people have been enthusiastically waiting for the so-called people'€™s party to celebrate the inauguration of Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo and Jusuf Kalla as Indonesia'€™s new president and vice president on Monday, there are others who are curious as to who will assist the two.

Jokowi and Kalla have been working to select the most qualified people to take up strategic posts, reportedly summoning several senior journalists to dig deeper into the track records of their ministerial candidates. Jokowi has promised to announce his Cabinet lineup on Oct. 21, the day after he takes the oath as the republic'€™s seventh president.

Names '€” politicians, academics and professionals '€” have been circulating for the last few weeks and the potential composition has been changing every minute.

But Jokowi remains secretive. His silence has raised criticism from several lawmakers, including the Golkar Party'€™s Tantowi Yahya. '€œPolitics basically involves deals, which can only be achieved through compromise. That is why a non-transactional coalition is virtually impossible,'€ he said, referring to Jokowi'€™s initial pledge to build a transaction-free coalition.

Indeed, with less than a week to go until his inauguration Jokowi met his political rivals, not to strike a deal but to ensure hatches are buried following their hard-fought competition. On Friday, Jokowi visited defeated presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto at his father'€™s house in South Jakarta.

With Jokowi turning up as a well-wisher on Prabowo'€™s 63rd birthday, the much-awaited meeting succeeded in calming the public and market alike.

Prabowo, the Gerindra Party patron and chairman, said he congratulated Jokowi on his upcoming inauguration as president and would order all his party'€™s legislators to attend the event, although he might give it a miss due to a pre-arranged business trip overseas.

A day earlier, the United Development Party (PPP) formalized its support for Jokowi'€™s coalition and decided to leave Prabowo'€™s Red-and-White Coalition after the Muslim-based party unanimously elected its secretary-general, Muhammad Romahurmuziy, to become the party'€™s new chairman in a national congress in Surabaya.

Romahurmuziy replaces embattled graft suspect Suryadharma Ali, who led the party to support Prabowo during the presidential election but gained nothing in the House of Representatives and People'€™s Consultative Assembly (MPR) leadership votes, which the Red-and-White Coalition won.

On Tuesday, Jokowi sprang a surprise meeting with Golkar chairman Aburizal Bakrie, who holds a powerful position in the Red-and-White Coalition.

The shift in mood of Golkar, Gerindra and the PPP will not guarantee solid support for Jokowi'€™s government in the opposition-dominated House. But at least their recognition of the country'€™s new president is a good sign that all parties will work together for the country, as Jokowi mentioned in his victory speech on July 23.

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The presidential inauguration will be broadcast live on TV and radio to enable those people living outside Jakarta or those who do not want to get trapped in traffic to follow the historic event.

The live broadcasts on Monday will be of far greater significance for the country compared with the live coverage of opulent wedding ceremonies of celebrities, according to TV watchdog Remotivi.

The group was responding to the 14 hours per day live coverage of celebrity couple Raffi Ahmad and Nagita Slavina Tengker'€™s wedding and reception on Oct. 16 and 17, which according to Remotivi constituted a misuse of the airwaves by three private TV stations.

It is not the first time TV stations have bought the rights to broadcast the weddings of Indonesian celebrities. In 2012, private TV channels broadcast the nuptials of pop songwriter Anang Hermansyah, who is now a lawmaker, and Ashanti in Jember, East Java. That same year, another TV station aired the matrimonial ceremony of actor and presenter Andhika Pratama and singer Ussy Sulistyowati.

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Amid the media hype surrounding the new president'€™s inauguration, both print and electronic media have been reporting shocking assaults on children by their peers. Two separate cases were revealed this week alone in the Central Java town of Temanggung and the North Sumatra capital of Medan.

Last week, another case of child brutality sparked public outcry. A two-minute video was uploaded on YouTube, showing a female student being assaulted by her classmates in a musholla (prayer room) at their school in Bukittinggi, West Sumatra.

A team of psychologists are now following up on the attack, while the Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) has urged the government and the police to arrest those responsible, including people who uploaded the video.

The government'€™s quick response prompted a father in Temanggung to speak up about the assault against his 10-year-old son. The boy was allegedly beaten up by his classmates in a classroom and the scene was recorded. The two-minute-and-29-second video was then circulated via cell phones.

The father said the school had asked him to remain quiet and had paid him Rp 370,000 (US$30) in compensation.

The incidence of violence in schools has reached an alarming level; and it is all the more concerning because the alleged perpetrators are minors. All stakeholders must immediately take measures to increase people'€™s awareness of bullying in schools to prevent such incidents from recurring.

'€” Primastuti Handayani