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).