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Jakarta Post

The abuse of verbal culture

My three-year-old nephew, recently stricken by a high fever, was taken by his mother to see a doctor

Ziad Salim (The Jakarta Post)
Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara
Sat, September 12, 2015

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The abuse of verbal culture

M

y three-year-old nephew, recently stricken by a high fever, was taken by his mother to see a doctor. While the doctor was busy talking to his mother about what was wrong with him, the kid suddenly shouted in the doctor'€™s face '€œbanyak omong!'€ (too much talking), much to the horror of his mother, and the doctor.

Any of us would be horrified to receive such an accusation, as we are aware that our freedom was fought for and secured by people who, like the good doctor, also talked too much.

Our first president, Sukarno, was the most notable, and proudest, of garrulous Indonesians, referring to himself once as the mouthpiece of Indonesian people.

In the two decades of his reign, he delivered speech after speech that ranked among the longest in history, so it is perhaps only natural that his people should follow suit in his verbosity.

And Indonesia has between 700 and 1,000 local languages for the long-winded to choose from.

Sukarno was replaced by Soeharto, famously called the '€œSmiling General'€ during his three decades of much smiling and little talking. Perhaps conscious of this failing, he appointed as minister Harmoko, whose name, it was said, was an abbreviation of hari-hari omong kosong (daily talking nonsense).

So it is no surprise when the first directly elected president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who governed from 2004 to 2014, chided the current government for relying on rhetoric to explain what is wrong with this country.

In a kind of '€œmental revolution'€ of sorts, current President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo has attempted to reverse the '€œtalking too much'€ cultural influence, naming his Cabinet the Working Cabinet '€” as opposed, it is implied, to a Talking Cabinet.

Jokowi'€™s worst fears materialized recently when a spat erupted between his newly appointed Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Rizal Ramli and Vice President Jusuf Kalla, the Working Cabinet descending into the Quarreling Cabinet.

Jokowi'€™s aversion to the culture of talking surely means he avoids the daily and nightly schedule of Indonesian television, where talking works (and pays well too). There are around 15 national TV channels or networks, all competing and out-talking each other with various talk shows.

And the people on all these shows (celebrities and comedians on chat shows, observers, analysts and experts on political debates or Indonesian Lawyers'€™ Club) are all '€œtalking heads'€, laughing and discussing, ostensibly to entertain the audiences.

Even religious preachers join the fray and compete with one another to do the same (though their words tend toward terrifying visions of the hellfire that awaits us).

For all that, TV producers think they offer public services. But apparently they can'€™t fool Jokowi (a man steeped in work ethic); top producers were summoned to the Palace recently for a bit of a scolding, albeit to no avail.

The problem is that there is a strong correlation between working and talking, and it is not only on television that talking is working.

For the rest of the people, talking is a national sport and for the politicians it is a kind of public defense as one of the accoutrements of democracy.

Except no one seems to notice that the correlation is inverted: people talk too much because they have no work to do; people talk politics and other nonsense instead of engaging in development, or helping the poor.

Unemployment and poverty are still rampant in this country. So when the government needed a slogan for the nation'€™s 70th anniversary, it chose '€œAyo Kerja'€ (let'€™s get to work). But they missed the point completely, because that slogan applies correctly only to the bureaucracy, rather than to the people, who would love to work, but can'€™t find the jobs.

Witness how the loudmouthed and pushy governor of Jakarta is made busy by these people.

So the people revert to the default mode: talk, talk a lot, or talk nonsense every day, even in the House of Representatives where Indonesia'€™s verbal culture is about to be extended outdoor into a public arena called '€œDemocracy Square'€.

Perhaps professional street demonstrators can make their speeches there. So Indonesia will finally have legitimate places for people to talk (indoor for the elected, outdoor for those who feel neglected and in the corridor, for the few selected), all at the public expense.

Like AirAsia'€™s motto, now everyone can talk. But if my three-year-old nephew is to be believed, it won'€™t work for Indonesia, where people do not work hard enough (according to Jokowi) or work hard but on pointless jobs, and where the leaders engage in too much rhetoric (according to SBY).

Those who speak plainly don'€™t always walk the talk either. The verbal culture has been used and abused for political and other purposes, to the country'€™s detriment.

___________________

The writer is a retired international civil servant.

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