Choosing a president: Image vs. substance

Choosing a president: Image vs. substance

B. Herry Priyono, Jakarta

Now that the presidential race has begun in earnest, the
streets are again flooded with banners. The campaign frenzy, like
commercial advertisement, has also created a bizarre world of
deception. Having never really presented any sensible platforms,
the only way the contestants can overcome public cynicism is by
brandishing images, and the more the merrier.

It is rather pointless to clamor for the return to grace in
politics; not because it is useless, but because it is rather
like preaching the virtue of politics without having even the
slightest clue as to how power works. The danger is the clamor
simply collapses into a beginner's excursion in piety. As for the
politics, it is about to be or not to be a president. Politics
without virtue is tragedy, but virtue without politics is comic.

Should we just shut our mouths then? We definitely should not.
But what sort of vocalization may contribute to the development
of civil society? Admitting the factual condition is the starting
point.

First, is the rule of expediency. Politics is a host of
activities based not on the logical conclusion of a carefully
reasoned argument, but on the exercise of power made attractive
and expedient to the public, with the proviso that "power" can be
both good and bad. Purely normative thinkers usually fail to
understand this first rule.

Second, politics has less to do with statecraft than with the
way power works. If politics is identical with statecraft and
government, then we are bound to commit the most elementary error
-- of thinking that the financial activities of the many business
magnates shaping the outcome are nonpolitical. Money is not a
partner to politics, but is the heart and soul of it.

Third -- and this may sound a mockery -- it is not far-fetched
to say that until this very moment, elections in Indonesia were
less a contest of policies and programs than a contest in
rallying the public's herd instincts to the celebrity image of
candidates. This is why the peacefulness of the proceedings, as
much as the appearance of stardom, is the most imminent question.
In this odd realm, the much-desired connection between the
election of a president and the improvement of Indonesia is
missing.

The absence of programs in the current campaign is, hopefully,
not the measure of the low intelligence of the contestants and
their spin doctors. A campaign based on political platforms is
indeed a breed of politics that demands voters' capacity for
abstraction. This, of course, is a luxury in a country starry-
eyed by the celebrity cult, and it seems this trend is keeping
Indonesia perpetually caught in a state of political immaturity,
never graduating to politics based on concrete policies and
programs.

This is an issue on which contestants could make a difference.
They are there to lead, not simply to follow herd instincts. If
the rhetoric lavishly wasted by all contestants is
indistinguishable in substance, then it is simply stating the
obvious that none of them will bring any agenda for developing
civil society to Indonesian politics. Meanwhile, instead of
joining the chorus of intrigues, it is the task of the informed
public to interrogate candidates on the implications of their
rhetoric on policy -- some suggestions may be useful toward this
end:

First, the economy. A candidate who goes on and on about
reviving the economy by creating a socio-political climate
conducive to investment is saying nothing. Why? It is the same as
saying that a safe destination will be attractive to visitors.
This is true not only for the economy, but also in other areas of
life -- there is nothing new in this sermon.

In my view, reviving the economy has less to do with this
self-evident rhetoric than with concrete programs to promote
entrepreneurship among the people. Scrutinizing the candidates on
the economy, in turn, necessitate a series of interrogations into
their policies on the banking system, financial infrastructure,
loan system, skills training, traditional markets, etc.

Second, and in relation to the above point, is the employment
problem. It is a cliche to argue that the only way to solve
unemployment is by making the climate as conducive as possible
for foreign investors. The premise? It is these investors that
will give jobs to the unemployed. A cliche is a kind of truism;
it is not a fallacious, but it is not ingenuous, either.

Those aware of the precarious nature of the global economy
will realize the shakiness of this argument: the unemployed will
not all be hired by those investors, and this leaves the majority
in limbo. It is for this reason that the first point above is
crucial.

In the end, reviving the economy has more to do with
developing people's entrepreneurial skills toward alternative
sources of income in times of economic distress than with making
them more dependent on non-embedded capital.

Third, is the perennial problem of education. It is not
unusual to find contestants uttering cheap rhetoric about free
education. When they are hard-pressed for details, they simply
utter the unconvincing reply that they would raise the education
budget to 20 percent. How on earth will they make good on that
promise? Don't they realize that corruption and the so-called
politico-economic structural adjustment programs have immersed
many public agencies in the throes of financial misery?

It is the task of interrogators to ask the candidates how they
plan to deal with this problem.

Many more crucial issues could be raised against the bubbling
rhetoric of candidates. Otherwise, what we will be left with is a
vacuous exercise simply calling for herd devotion. Devotion, as
we know, is the child of ignorance.

But, what if the remainder of the campaign period remains a
game of chameleonic performances?

Then our choice may be dependent on our answer to the riddle:
If you were in a life boat with a human butcher, a dreamer and a
fanatic, and had to throw two of them out to survive, which would
you choose?

The writer (b.herry-priyono@provindo.org) is a postgraduate
lecturer at the Driyarkara School of Philosophy, Jakarta, and is
an alumnus of the London School of Economics (LSE).