Can we still tell right from wrong?

JAKARTA (JP): Independence Day really seemed one of those "can't miss" movies, so my daughter, my wife and I went to see it at Ciputra Mall one Thursday afternoon. We bought the tickets, and went for a short stroll in the mall.

Upon returning and entering the theater, however, we found a teenage couple and a six-year-old boy comfortably seated in what we believed to be our seats. OK. We sensed it was confrontation time again.

First, to avoid the embarrassment of barking up the wrong tree, my wife checked the back of an empty seat next to the young couple to find its number. She was thus positive that they were indeed in our seats. They still seemed to be totally oblivious to our confusion. However, just as my wife was about to ask them to show us their tickets, the young couple calmly rose and moved to their own seats at the far end of the row. There was no apology.

Now we had three tickets, but only two seats so far. Next to the boy was a well-dressed young woman, who, like the youngsters, didn't seem to notice what was going on. My wife checked our tickets again to make sure that it was really our seat the boy was in. Just as my wife was about to open her mouth to speak to his mother, she grabbed his arm and put him on her lap.

What these people did was try to steal our rights, pretend they had not done anything, and wait until the last moment to see whether or not we were willing to grab our right back.

In this country, we go through things like this almost every day. For a lot of Indonesians, trying to grab what is clearly the right of others seems to have become a game. It has become an enjoyable game of power in which they test our guts. They silently challenge us, and they want to see whether we have the nerve to fight or not. If we are caught in a moment of weakness, they will win the game and get away with it. If we have the stomach to fight back, they will give up and say nothing. In many cases, though, they will get mad at us and abuse us as if we had no right to our rights in the first place.

This makes life in Jakarta as well as in other big places in this country so unsettling, particularly if we are used to taking our rights for granted. The fact is, every moment of the day we must be on guard: In the theater, in the supermarket, in the restaurant, inside and outside the bank, on the streets, in your own front yard, you name it. In queues, people just pretend to be totally unaware that they are cutting in front of you. In reality, they just do it and wait quietly for your reaction. If you choose not to react or claim your right to get served first because you have arrived first, they will move ahead and disregard you completely. If you decide to protest, they will usually back off. Sometimes they will fake surprise that you exist and have been standing in line all the time. At other times, they will back off but throw you an offended look.

Having to continuously guard your right makes life unnecessarily wearisome, too. You cannot relax and enjoy yourselves when you want to. In Jakarta and other big cities in Indonesia, you simply can't afford not to remain alert.

The biggest irony of all is, we always claim to be one of the friendliest peoples in the world. It's ironic, because common sense will tell you that a people cannot be called friendly as long as they constantly prey on each other's rights. Furthermore, we also proudly call ourselves "hospitable". Now, can you call a people hospitable if, despite their smiles, they are more than ready to leap over you and snatch your rights away any moment?

As a people, I'm sure we Indonesians have not been this way since the dawn of history. If you go to remote places, you will still meet villagers whose simple life reflects the utmost in sincerity and respect for others. Why do we now have so many shameless people who have become accustomed to robbing other people of their rights? Because of globalization, as they always say? I don't buy it.

I am convinced that we have become the kind of people that we are only because, as a nation, we have lived too long with gross injustice and unfairness. We have seen too many examples of how power and authority can nullify your rights in the blink of an eye.

One day, a foreign visitor came to Jakarta and was caught in a traffic jam. He was surprised to see how buses, cars, bajajs, motorcycles and bikes all aggravated the situation by going on all sides -- left, right and everywhere. He commented, "I thought in Indonesia you were supposed to drive on the left." His host, an Indonesian, could only sigh, "We can no longer tell which is right and which is left around here. We don't even know what is right and what is wrong anymore. We also have lost the gift to distinguish between what is our right and what is not."

How right he was!

-- Zatni Arbi