Daniel Lev helps to bring some imagination<\/p>\n
By Ati Nurbaiti<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): In the three weeks that Daniel Lev was in
\nJakarta, he said he was in confusion. The city was so big, and
\nwhile people asked to talk to him in the hope of gaining some
\nclarity over the turmoil, \"I myself was dragged into the muddle;
\nJakarta is so full of gossip, everyone wants to know how to get
\nout of the crisis.\"<\/p>\n
Given time, he would have loved to have visited old friends
\nand \"families\" in other cities such as Surabaya, Medan and
\nYogygakarta. But he was scheduled to leave Indonesia on Friday,
\nto return to his family in Seattle, the United States.<\/p>\n
Lev was among the long-time observers of Indonesia invited to
\nan international conference here last month, organized by the
\nIndonesian Institute of Sciences. Inevitably it turned out to be
\na reunion of local experts and \"Indonesianists\" like Lev and R.
\nWilliam Liddle, who have been studying the country for more than
\n40 years.<\/p>\n
Lev, 65, first came here with his wife Arlene when he was 23,
\nin 1959 and they have returned several times since. Among their
\nvery old friends are writer Umar Kayam and his family. Arlene
\nstudied painting here with the late Zaini.<\/p>\n
Lev is best remembered for his study on the parliamentary
\nperiod: The Transition to Guided Democracy in Indonesia and to
\naudiences here in the past weeks, he has suggested that it is
\nthis parliamentary system which should be applied again. To the
\nyoung and old Lev has shared recollections of how knowledgeable
\npoliticians debated hard but remained good friends; of how
\ncorruption was rare despite the hard times; and how there were no
\ndeaths because of government decisions.<\/p>\n
He encourages people to have some imagination, however hard or
\nutopic it may seem these days with the trouble in acquiring basic
\nneeds and dismissal looming over people's heads.<\/p>\n
While people may only remember the parliamentary period as
\nbringing little more than bitter political divisions among
\nordinary people, Lev says, drawing from history, it would be the
\nonly way to prevent a repetition of a strong executive -- \"which
\nfor over 40 years (since the parliamentary system was abandoned
\nin 1959) has done so much damage.\"<\/p>\n
Being a little too fluent in improper, colloquial Indonesian,
\nlike several other Indonesianists, Lev always uses the term
\nngerusakin (destroy).<\/p>\n
Strength<\/p>\n
The strongest impression made on him during his stay, he said
\non Tuesday, was the public's deep cynicism and pessimism, and
\ntheir distrust of government. There's a deep wish for change, he
\nnotes, but at the same, a \"lack of political imagination\" in
\nwhich many can only associate his suggested improvements, either
\na \"multiparty system\" or a possible change in the 1945
\nConstitution, with chaos.<\/p>\n
In these times of despair, the aftermath of riots, and new-
\nfound freedom, Lev points to what he sees as the strength in
\nIndonesian society.<\/p>\n
\"It has never been a society filled with hatred.\"<\/p>\n
The strength is in society itself, he says, a complex and
\nfundamentally healthy mixture of cultures in which \"by and large,
\npeople have become used to living with differences.\"<\/p>\n
He adds, \"but I'm impressed that (conflicts) have always been
\nengineered from above.\" He is convinced that none of the riots of
\nthe past were spontaneous, citing for instance anti-Chinese riots
\nin the late 1950s. Hence his conclusion that \"the problem has
\nalways been with the government,\" that there has always been
\nscores of \"courageous\" people willing to stand up to the
\nauthorities with the risk of, at the least, being jailed.<\/p>\n
So he refutes the tendency \"to blame the victim,\" the view
\nthat perhaps society was partly to blame for allowing such a
\nstrong government to develop. \"People couldn't stop it; a
\ngovernment based on an army is very dangerous.\"<\/p>\n
Lev says he was \"not even surprised\" by the Trisakti shootings
\nand riots, which he monitored from Seattle. He added that he had
\nbeen \"very much influenced\" by a 1992 paper by former student
\nactivist Marsilam Simanjuntak.<\/p>\n
\"Marsilam wrote that the end of regimes in Indonesia always
\nhappens with violence,\" and that it would be the only way that
\nthe New Order could end.<\/p>\n
He sees the necessary role of professionals if a fresh
\nbeginning is to be chartered, and this is the subject of his
\nongoing research.<\/p>\n
Lev notes that while professionals have been involved in the
\n\"moral\" movement, they have yet to show eagerness to be active in
\npolitical organizations, as politics has been labeled dirty. \"But
\nthen they let the people who have already been labeled as dirty
\ninto these organizations,\" said Lev.<\/p>\n
This is a comparative study; he is also studying professionals
\nin Malaysia and has so far got a clear picture of the differences
\nbetween the two countries.<\/p>\n
Given the constant political intervention here, he notes how
\nweak professionals' organizations here have become, compared to
\nthose in Malaysia.<\/p>\n
Then there is his almost completed biography of the late noted
\nIndonesian lawyer Yap Thiam Hien. The lawyer was \"an
\nextraordinary man,\" said Lev, who taped hours of interviews with
\nhim before Yap died in 1989. Yap is best known as an advocate of
\nhuman rights, long before it became part of official jargon.<\/p>\n
There are more studies on Lev's list: he says he still wants
\nto understand more about Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia,
\nincluding developing his interest in Islamic courts.<\/p>\n
Another wish is to conduct research on women's organizations
\nhere and their changing position in society. The change, he said,
\nwas \"quite confusing\" to men, both in Indonesia and America.<\/p>\n
Theater<\/p>\n
In his tiring time here, with several appointments every day,
\nLev mostly stayed at the home of his friend, the noted lawyer
\nAdnan Buyung Nasution. No time to watch his favorite funny
\nJavanese ludruk theater comedies or tour the sites. Besides,
\n\"I've never thought of myself as a tourist here.\"<\/p>\n
The ludruk brings home Lev's \"disappointment\" of not fully
\nunderstanding the language, as there was never time to study it.<\/p>\n
It sounds that he is closer to Indonesia than to Russia,
\nwhence his parents hail, even though he is only of the second
\ngeneration of immigrants. His father Louis, a carpenter, and his
\nmother Bessie, a full-time homemaker and mother of five, arrived
\nin the States in 1930. Lev was the youngest. \"I never knew her
\nfull name, she only began to learn to sign her name after my
\nfather died.\"<\/p>\n
As of Tuesday Lev had not decided what to take home as
\nsouvenirs. An exception was his daughter Claire, who only asked
\nfor sarongs \"because she had ripped her old ones.\" His son Louis
\nplays the violin in the orchestra in Pittsburgh, \"and he's got so
\nmany violins already.\" Meanwhile his wife Arlene, he says, is
\nbusy preparing a painting exhibition.<\/p>\n
During his stay Lev says he most enjoyed meeting old friends
\nand eating. All kinds of foods, he said, including rendang which
\nhe's not supposed to consume a lot of given his lingering
\ncholesterol problem, \"But I do.\"<\/p>\n
Back home, Lev will resume teaching at Seattle's University of
\nWashington. And he won't be far from Indonesian food. \"When we
\nsit down to something comfortable it's likely to be Indonesian.\"
\nLev does a lot of the cooking and spices are easy to find now, he
\nsays; bubur ayam or chicken porridge often appears at breakfast
\nwhile his desire for durian can be satiated somewhat with that
\nfrom Thailand.<\/p>\n
That, said Lev, is an example of \"globalization\" which he
\nclearly benefits from. But he's old-fashioned when it comes to
\ntelevision, from which millions globally have benefited.<\/p>\n
\"It's hard for me to believe something (reported) on TV until
\nI've read about it.\" Lev would be most disliked as a parent these
\ndays; when Claire and Louis were young, they were only allowed to
\nwatch television for an hour a week!<\/p>\n
\"Students read less now,\" and this, he insists, is partly
\nbecause of too much TV. Maybe he has a point. A bit more reading,
\nparticularly of past mistakes and less \"potato couching,\"
\nperhaps, would help to inspire the imagination we seem to need
\nmore of now.<\/p>",
"url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/daniel-lev-helps-to-bring-some-imagination-1447893297",
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