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ccording to “Mawalu2” on Kompasiana (a citizen media blog), there are at least two things that make one indisputably Indonesian: eating rice grown on Indonesian soil, and having your mother’s placenta buried in Indonesian ground.

He was of course reacting to the brouhaha over Arcandra Tahar, who was recently sacked from his position as energy and mineral resources minister.

Well, if this is the case, then I do not qualify to be Indonesian, as not only was I not born in this country, I was brought up abroad and probably ate bread and potatoes more than I ate rice.

And can you imagine mothers having to send their placentas back to Indonesia to have them buried there, to ensure their children’s citizenship? I can just see all those Indonesia-bound flying placentas!

What is citizenship anyway? This, and many other questions of principle, philosophy and technical-bureaucracy arose with the Arcandra Tahir and Gloria Natapradja Hamel incidents.

Who’s Gloria? She’s the 16-year-old student from Depok who at the last minute was barred from a flag-hoisting ceremony to celebrate the country’s independence on Aug. 17.

According to her father, Didier Hamel, she had a French passport because she’s not old enough to have a KTP (identity card), a prerequisite to applying for an Indonesian passport. So he got her a French passport as he often takes her to visit relatives in France. He told me that a passport in France is not an identity document — it’s simply a travel document.

The French have the equivalent of the Indonesian KTP that bestows citizenship. So strictly speaking, Gloria is not French. She was born and raised in Depok, and is as Indonesian as Indonesian can be. But the problem is that by (Indonesian) law, children have no identity until they are 18.

Didier is a painter and owner of Duta Fine Arts Gallery, which primarily promotes Indonesian artists. He has lived here for decades, loves Indonesia and has raised his children to have an Indonesian education. Gloria was selected to be a member of the Paskibraka after six months of training, and various physical, intellectual and national-loyalty tests mean she passed the requirements imposed by the Paskibraka Committee.

To be then suddenly cast aside just because of an uncertain technicality is not only cruel and dismissive of Gloria’s determined and serious efforts, but also shows an incompetence, ignorance and slapdash way of working.

This incompetence is even more glaring and gross in the case of Arcandra. The State Palace, predictably, denies negligence, that his dismissal was a response to the controversy over his citizenship.

Oh really? Then the Palace people are like John, the 3-year-old boy on the Ellen Degeneres show who denied stealing colored sugar sprinkles with a completely innocent face while his face was covered with sprinkles. The sprinkles are the denial. In John’s case, it was a denial of fact, in the State Palace’s case, a denial of responsibility.

The responsibility lies not just with the State Palace, but as constitutional law expert Denny Indrayana has said, also with the State Secretariat, the State Intelligence Agency (BIN), the police, the immigration office and the Law and Human Rights Ministry.

Hello guys, were you all taking a nap at the time? In other countries, heads would be rolling, either by being sacked, or taking it upon themselves to resign. But no, not in Indonesia! No sense of shame at all!

As a result of this, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo himself is being attacked when in fact it’s not his task to vet a candidate’s suitability for a certain government position.

 Now the government says that it will have Arcandra reinstated. Oh, it should take a week or so, it claims.

What the…? What do they think they are doing? Coitus interruptus? In, out, in, out…

Hey, it’s not that simple guys! Okay, Arcandra has an Indonesian passport. It means he has an Indonesian travel document, like Gloria having a French passport.

But again as Denny points out, “Gaining back Indonesian citizenship is not that easy.

Citizenship law stipulates, among other things, that the applicant has to have lived in Indonesia for the past five years. That requirement is not fulfilled if Arcandra has spent the last 20 years in the US,” Denny said. So there!

Citizenship is a necessary inconvenience. Sure, there are all the technical and bureaucratic aspects, which are made worse if they are politicized and doused with buckets of pseudo nationalism, which is what we typically do in Indonesia.

But there is also the spirit of citizenship or nationality. There are many Indonesians abroad who don’t hold Indonesian citizenship, but who in their hearts remain loyal to Indonesia and would love to do something for their country of origin precisely because of the success they have achieved in their adopted country. It would be so much easier if they had dual citizenship.

And what about foreigners in Indonesia who love the country with all their hearts and have dedicated their lives to making Indonesia a better place but find it so difficult to get Indonesian citizenship?

My neighbor Hywel Coleman, for example, a Brit who has for decades dedicated himself to education in Indonesia, still does not have Indonesian citizenship after years of trying.

Or Aurélien Brulé, better known as Chanee Kalaweit, a French national, who established the Kalaweit Project, the most important gibbon rehabilitation project in the world — he’s in the same boat as Hywel. Chanee says, “My face is bule [pale], but my heart is red and white.”

There are many others like them who have married Indonesians, live in Indonesian communities, speak Indonesian fluently, who want so much to be legally Indonesian, have still not managed to do so because of bureaucratic hurdles.

So how do we reconcile this legal-bureaucratic and spirit gap? Dual citizenship is the answer.

In this respect we can learn from Pakistan, which, unlike India and Indonesia, allows dual citizenship with countries willing to enter into a dual nationality agreement. The reason is simple: to enable them to travel freely to Pakistan, and also remain connected with their country of origin.

It’s also to avoid the high visa fees charged by some of these countries — a technical issue, but important nevertheless.

So how about it, Indonesia? We are friends with Pakistan too, so sorry India, this time I suggest we follow the example of Pakistan!
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