Building a moral force within our current political life

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): To be a visible member of a big political party and a not-so visible member of the House of Representatives (DPR) is a privilege that should make one feel proud and content.

Yet, this is not the case with me. I have become increasingly uneasy and uncomfortable with my present status. I often ask myself these days whether being a politician is the right thing for me at this advanced age.

Every time I enter the gates of the DPR compound I feel restless, haunted by the question, "What am I doing here?"

It is my burning desire that when the time comes for me to go, I will be remembered as a good columnist, and not as a member of the House.

And I think that it is only through writing good columns that I will be able -- to borrow Longfellow's words -- to contribute something to "make our lives sublime/And, departing, leave behind us/Footprints on the sands of time".

I will never become a good columnist if I continue spending so much of my time thinking politically about issues that I either do not really understand or in which I have no real interest. I can be a good columnist only if I spend enough time reading, contemplating and writing.

I realize that a good House is an absolute must in our present transition to a democratic system. But are we really fighting for democracy?

Looking at how our political leaders argue with one another, I sincerely doubt their commitment to democracy. Scoring political points for their respective parties and groups seems to be their primary goal. The expressed desire to improve the people's lives seems to be only lip service, aimed primarily at promoting one's political group.

My negative feelings are reinforced by what I daily witness and experience on the street. Every time my car stops at a traffic light or in a traffic jam, hordes of young kids approach asking for a miserable Rp 100.

I automatically look at my windshield, and the DPR/MPR parking permit that is plastered on my windshield makes me feel guilty. I ask myself, "What have we done thus far to pressure the government to do something immediately to reduce these heart- rending social conditions?"

Certainly this is a serious problem to which education can provide a long-term solution.

I am by training an "educationist" and by calling a teacher. My long experience in this area enables me to see the horrible state of our educational system today. What have we done to remedy this situation?

We have been endlessly engaged in debates about revising the curriculum and the yearly final examinations (Ebtanas), as if these two issues were the most important problems besetting our educational system.

We have thus far never seriously discussed, for instance, the issue of fundamental educational reform that will make the younger generations capable of leading the country out of our current economic and political chaos, and out of our current "technological backwater" status.

It is against this mental backdrop that I read Professor Jeffrey Sachs' article A new map of the world, in the latest issue of The Economist (June 24, 2000).

Prof. Sachs states the world is divided today by technology, and no longer by ideology. Technology has divided the world's population into three categories.

First, "those providing nearly all of the world's technology innovation", roughly comprising 15 percent of the world's population.

Second, those who have acquired the capability to adopt technological innovations in production and consumption, which includes roughly half of the world's population.

And third are those who live in the "technologically disconnected" regions of the world, comprising about one third of the world's population.

Technologically disconnected regions do not always conform to national borders, and many of them are in fact pockets within nations.

Indonesia has such pockets. West Irian, for instance, contains regions where the population is entirely disconnected from technological innovations.

And along the southern coast of Java there are many communities that are technologically excluded regions. According to Prof. Sachs, the sad thing about this condition is that "societies that do not keep up with global technology often collapse", unable even to maintain their standards of living.

Viewed in this perspective, educational reform that will enhance the technological capacity of the younger generations is an urgent matter.

If we want to rid ourselves of the poverty that has plagued this nation since independence, we must make parts of our population highly innovative technologically, while the rest of the population must be made increasingly more capable of adopting technological innovations.

Achieving capability in technological innovation, even if only for a limited portion of our population, is a must. This is because technological innovation shows "increasing returns to scale", meaning that regions or populations with advanced technologies will be more innovative.

Thus the task that lies ahead is twofold: creating technologically advanced pockets in our society, and erasing the technology-excluded pockets from our national map.

This takes time, of course, but if we start now there is still hope that one day in the foreseeable future we will see our country emerge from its present poverty.

But if we continuously delay such action, then it is impossible to see the light at the end of this dark tunnel; or to see "the silver tint in the clouds of doubt", as one poet put it.

Why can't we change the focus of our deliberations about education from Ebtanas and curriculum reform to issues that affect the future of the nation?

Why do we in the DPR always react to government policies, instead of asking the government to direct its attention and thinking to more strategic questions?

When it comes to this question, I am beginning to doubt whether our politicians today really understand that education as an issue is no less important than the economy and politics.

My impression is that our current politicians do not understand that education is anticipatory and preparatory in nature. Indeed, education can do nothing to improve our present economic and political conditions, but it can prepare the nation for better economic and political conditions in the future.

Educational policies that do not provide sufficient attention to the future of the nation result in the deterioration of the nation's capacity to govern itself. This is bad politics. We can change this situation only if there is sufficient moral force in how we conduct politics.

This nation once had a political culture in which morality was held in sufficiently high esteem. This political culture slowly disappeared and was replaced by one that was more or less hedonistic-egotistic.

Shall we ever be able to retrieve and revive our lost humanistic-nationalistic political culture?

As usual, I think this is a question to be answered by politicians of the younger generations. Each generation has the historic duty of shaping its own political culture.

The older generations cannot, and should not, impose its aging political culture on the young. The younger generations are not an "ego-extension" of the old.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural issues.