Learning to be Scared
Only by sharpening our inner eyes can the dream of Golden Indonesia in 2045 be more than a political dream but an assured reality.
“If we are not scared and we see this as business as usual, then it will be very dangerous.”
(President Joko Widodo, in a limited Cabinet meeting on budget absorption, Kompas.com, 8/7/2020)
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s deep concerns on the performance of his aides, including state ministers, in a plenary Cabinet meeting on 18 June 2020, is in line with the result of a Kompas survey in early July 2020. The survey found that 87.8 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with ministers’ performances, especially in Covid-19 mitigation (Kompas, 13/7/2020). It is still fresh in our minds how the President frowned, drew his breath and talked in a tone of discontent and fluctuating articulation. The President’s body language reflects the totality of his empathy over people’s sorrow.
Frustration, sadness, annoyance and anxiety rolled into one due to his helpers’ slow performance. The President is so apprehensive and exasperated that he even mentioned the possibility of reshuffling his Cabinet.
The Javanese culture, especially in Surakarta, recognizes the pasemon (subtle and disguised expression), comprising three levels of how a king would reprimand his subordinates: semu menteri (subtle innuendos for ministers), esem bupati (wry smiles for regents) and dupak kuli (kicks for physical laborers). His talk of a Cabinet reshuffle in front of his helpers is in line with the saying “blunt warning directly at the intended persons”.
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Talks of a Cabinet reshuffle have led to various political speculations, as the public and politicians begin to guess and those who have yet to enjoy power begin their political maneuvering. Opponents begin to fuel the fire of a reshuffle to undermine the President’s authority.
The President’s helpers, especially ministers, reportedly had varied responses: self-introspection, disappointment, crankiness, surrender and other expressions. Therefore, to prevent speculations that disrupt the stability of the government’s performance and heat up politics, State Secretary Pratikno promotes a soothing narrative that all ministries and government agencies have shown extraordinary performance and that, if this continues, there will be no need for a reshuffle (Kompas, 7/7/2020).
However, the President seems to be closely monitoring the performance of his helpers. Not a month after the stern warning of a cabinet reshuffle, ministers’ performance is deemed unsatisfactory.
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The President again showed his morosity and voiced his annoyance in a limited cabinet meeting on budget absorption. The President said that he hoped his helpers would sharpen their sensitivity and develop fear as the specter of crisis hung low over Indonesia’s economic recovery that would only be possible by increased government’s spending.
A projection by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) cites that global economy contraction may reach between 6 percent and 7.6 percent (Kompas, 9/7/2020).
In a certain perspective, the President’s “threats and warnings” can be seen as the manifestation of his frustration over confusions and chaos in state governance that resulting in the country not going forward but merely muddling through. Sadly, such chaos has never been corrected thoroughly. Instead, it becomes increasingly permanent and institutionalized and crisis is seen as normalcy.
Our level of emergency is no longer about the absence of a sense of crisis but is instead about a crisis of sense. Crisis escalation is seen as common. We are like frogs boiled in warm water inside a crock, complacent by the comfort only to realize our doom when the water gets too hot and we are inches away from death.
It is so difficult to unravel these entanglements in politics that even Einstein said politics was harder than physics.
It is unfair to put the burden entirely on the President’s helpers, especially state ministers, for their poor performance. This is because it is nearly impossible to fix the chaotic state governance due to the absence of collective goodwill among political elites. It is so difficult to unravel these entanglements in politics that even Einstein said politics was harder than physics.
The statement was reportedly a response of an audience member’s question in a conference in Dublin, New York, in 1946, on why human intelligence could discover the structure of atom and yet could create political schemes and designs to prevent atom from destroying mankind. The conference was organized by those who are disappointed by the League of Nations for its inability to prevent international conflict that lead to the Allied Forces dropping an atomic bomb on Japan.
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The President clearly hopes that his helpers will learn how to be scared over the crisis, use logics of emergency and sharpen their inner eyes’ ability to see that, behind the Covid-19 disaster, lies the nation’s abundant treasures; not only natural resources but also abundant social capital and culture of solidarity.
Only by sharpening our inner eyes can the dream of Golden Indonesia in 2045 be more than a political dream but an assured reality.