Contest of power is absurd

Contest of power is absurd

From Rakyat Merdeka

Mass radicalism will find fertile ground if groups in favor of and against President Abdurrahman Wahid are allowed to mobilize their followers. Those who will be gripped by the greatest worry will be the common people, who have never bothered about the controversy surrounding Gus Dur. Common people only want a peaceful life, to earn enough to eat and to send their children to school.

The people in general do not need democracy if the process takes place without heeding ethics and politeness. Mass mobilization is tolerable only during election campaigns. On other occasions mass mobilization must be considered an absurd and primitive show of force.

All parties must realize that mobilizing the masses in the streets at a time when there is no election campaign is a serious threat against the sense of security of the community and the normalization of the political process. I hope our political elite refrain from making use of innocent people to support their narrow interests. Give the people education, not uniforms. Give them jobs and do not exploit them in the name of religion and ideology.

It really saddens me to see villagers being recruited not to be educated and economically empowered, but just to be provided with uniforms. Why have they only been given such political masks? Why the use of uniforms resembling military fatigue while we say that we dislike uniformity and that we do not want to see the military involved in political affairs?. Or, perhaps, other groups in uniform have been invited to take part in political activities?

I suggest that Banser -- the militia-like multipurpose task force of Anshor, the youth wing of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) -- should consider carefully their plan to mobilize its members. This is not the time for an election campaign. What if the people demand that Banser be disbanded? What is the use of playing hero in military fatigues in Jakarta?

Better abort the plan.

ARI WIBOWO

Jakarta