It has to be admitted that we are currently experiencing a period of statesman deficit and politician surplus. The two are, of course, different.
The former thinks in the long term, is visionary, and prioritizes state interests, while the latter thinks the opposite. In the hands of statesmen, politics is a strategy to build the road to civility and produces a number of policies that take the public’s side, while for politicians, politics is simply a means to attain power, a ladder in their hunt for thrones and a framework for obtaining material objectives guided by group interests.
Producing statesmen should be the trajectory of political parties, mass organizations, universities, and other institutions. Our democracy, which we celebrate, does not stop simply at electoral calculations and its procedural fulfillment, but also extends to its substance.
The rituals of the general and regional elections should at least become an arena for selecting potential leaders who possess the spirit and characteristics of statesmanship, an arena that gives birth to leaders who possess the moral qualifications of dedication and high integrity.
This is not the easy path. But only through this path can the country’s problems be resolved. Each region should not simply have a regent-mayor and governor, but these regional heads should truly be an answer for their people. Not as it is to the contrary at present, adding to the mountain of problems through the increasing red-handed arrests made by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).
There is nothing wrong with regional autonomy, but what is wrong is the mistaken notion that regional autonomy is meant to build small kings, that it is an endeavor to create decentralized corruption, and that it is used to establish collusion between politicians and rulers for rent-seeking, perpetuating power, and pass them down as inheritances to their wives and children. Centralization, which was the characteristics of the despotic New Order, was criticized as a collective gala, but now the gala has shifted from the upstream to the downstream.
Monsters
The philosopher Nietzsche once described a crowd of politicians as frightening monsters that devoured everything whose needs were never satisfied. This concept seems relevant to the present context.
Politics has not merely become a commander, but the supreme commander who determines everything. Politics as a precision technique promotes lies as truth. In its hands, not only culture, but also ethnicity and even religion are manipulated simply to perpetuate or to seize power.
Engineering identity politics is not only permissible, but also lawful, as what is not permitted is defeat. Not only real “ghosts”, but bogus ghosts are also narrated continuously and doubling the stories never stops, as the most important thing is to influence the masses and later, when the general election season comes around, they can be converted into votes. The issues of conflicts, disputes, horizontal clashes, and prolonged psychological trauma never enter the calculation.
History in the hands of politicians is not a series of events to be taken as the best lessons, but simply a fragment of a legitimate story that is engineered to benefit their side. Instead of furthering cultural reconciliation and pioneering an authentic route for humanity, history can be recycled if necessary to reopen old wounds and served again in a new form with new interests. History becomes a platform for reviving vengeance and strengthening mutual suspicion. If necessary, clashes are incited again so that resentment and dissatisfaction can be finally resolved.
I agree with Mahfud MD that what is seen in Senayan nowadays is the ugliest generation of politicians. Its top leader has problems with the parties, the masses, and even himself. How can it be that his pretrial victory was not greeted with joy, and in its indication that he was not involved whatsoever in the e-ID case, rather than rehabilitating his name, the public did not trust the verdict instead?
It is only this era that a leader of an honorable institution who is eager to be respected, instead becomes an object of ridicule on social media. A major political party should be greatly offended by the very damaging viral memes that are a big blow to its leader, but that has not happened.
I quote from the social media posting of an LP3ES researcher, AE Priyono, which described the supernatural powers of a political party leader: “When a knife scratches his hands, the knife bleeds; when observing thawaf (an Islamic ritual pilgrimage) in Mecca, it is the Kaaba that encircles him; when he is ticketed, it is the policeman who shows his driving license; when he eats porridge, it is the vendor who pays for it; when he wants to drink fresh milk, it is the cow that comes to him.”
Counterculture
For me, it is not simply humor, but a satirical, cynical cultural movement that is at once a counterculture over the collapse of justice on the one hand and on the other, the absence of shame in the hustle-and-bustle of Indonesian politics today.
The KPK, an institution that has the full and complete trust of the people and has compiled evidence for two years, suddenly found itself in the hands of a single judge who declared on unconvincing arguments that it had insufficient evidence. The people cannot do anything, because they are neither judges nor politicians. They can only resist in their own way: laugh at it all.
Do the people have to hold mass demonstrations? The answer is, who will voluntarily start such a movement and from where will the funds come? Moreover, in this agrarian country, a part of the masses is tempted only by issues that are unclear, such as communist revival, blasphemy, the Shia emergence, the Ahmadiyah deviation, establishing houses of worship, and other SARA issues. The complicated affair of a political party figure embroiled in a legal case is considered a personal problem and unrelated to the party, let alone the livelihood of many people.
Amidst this drought of statesmanship, we can still laugh after being treated to the spectacle of an acrobatic politician who, rather skillfully, played the role of Dursasana with his “white eel” spell.
ASEP SALAHUDIN
First Deputy Rector of IAILM Suryalaya Tasikmalaya, Chairman of Lakpesdam West Java, Executive Board member of Nahdlatul Ulama
