Daniel Lev helps to bring some imagination

Daniel Lev helps to bring some imagination

By Ati Nurbaiti

JAKARTA (JP): In the three weeks that Daniel Lev was in
Jakarta, he said he was in confusion. The city was so big, and
while people asked to talk to him in the hope of gaining some
clarity over the turmoil, "I myself was dragged into the muddle;
Jakarta is so full of gossip, everyone wants to know how to get
out of the crisis."

Given time, he would have loved to have visited old friends
and "families" in other cities such as Surabaya, Medan and
Yogygakarta. But he was scheduled to leave Indonesia on Friday,
to return to his family in Seattle, the United States.

Lev was among the long-time observers of Indonesia invited to
an international conference here last month, organized by the
Indonesian Institute of Sciences. Inevitably it turned out to be
a reunion of local experts and "Indonesianists" like Lev and R.
William Liddle, who have been studying the country for more than
40 years.

Lev, 65, first came here with his wife Arlene when he was 23,
in 1959 and they have returned several times since. Among their
very old friends are writer Umar Kayam and his family. Arlene
studied painting here with the late Zaini.

Lev is best remembered for his study on the parliamentary
period: The Transition to Guided Democracy in Indonesia and to
audiences here in the past weeks, he has suggested that it is
this parliamentary system which should be applied again. To the
young and old Lev has shared recollections of how knowledgeable
politicians debated hard but remained good friends; of how
corruption was rare despite the hard times; and how there were no
deaths because of government decisions.

He encourages people to have some imagination, however hard or
utopic it may seem these days with the trouble in acquiring basic
needs and dismissal looming over people's heads.

While people may only remember the parliamentary period as
bringing little more than bitter political divisions among
ordinary people, Lev says, drawing from history, it would be the
only way to prevent a repetition of a strong executive -- "which
for over 40 years (since the parliamentary system was abandoned
in 1959) has done so much damage."

Being a little too fluent in improper, colloquial Indonesian,
like several other Indonesianists, Lev always uses the term
ngerusakin (destroy).

Strength

The strongest impression made on him during his stay, he said
on Tuesday, was the public's deep cynicism and pessimism, and
their distrust of government. There's a deep wish for change, he
notes, but at the same, a "lack of political imagination" in
which many can only associate his suggested improvements, either
a "multiparty system" or a possible change in the 1945
Constitution, with chaos.

In these times of despair, the aftermath of riots, and new-
found freedom, Lev points to what he sees as the strength in
Indonesian society.

"It has never been a society filled with hatred."

The strength is in society itself, he says, a complex and
fundamentally healthy mixture of cultures in which "by and large,
people have become used to living with differences."

He adds, "but I'm impressed that (conflicts) have always been
engineered from above." He is convinced that none of the riots of
the past were spontaneous, citing for instance anti-Chinese riots
in the late 1950s. Hence his conclusion that "the problem has
always been with the government," that there has always been
scores of "courageous" people willing to stand up to the
authorities with the risk of, at the least, being jailed.

So he refutes the tendency "to blame the victim," the view
that perhaps society was partly to blame for allowing such a
strong government to develop. "People couldn't stop it; a
government based on an army is very dangerous."

Lev says he was "not even surprised" by the Trisakti shootings
and riots, which he monitored from Seattle. He added that he had
been "very much influenced" by a 1992 paper by former student
activist Marsilam Simanjuntak.

"Marsilam wrote that the end of regimes in Indonesia always
happens with violence," and that it would be the only way that
the New Order could end.

He sees the necessary role of professionals if a fresh
beginning is to be chartered, and this is the subject of his
ongoing research.

Lev notes that while professionals have been involved in the
"moral" movement, they have yet to show eagerness to be active in
political organizations, as politics has been labeled dirty. "But
then they let the people who have already been labeled as dirty
into these organizations," said Lev.

This is a comparative study; he is also studying professionals
in Malaysia and has so far got a clear picture of the differences
between the two countries.

Given the constant political intervention here, he notes how
weak professionals' organizations here have become, compared to
those in Malaysia.

Then there is his almost completed biography of the late noted
Indonesian lawyer Yap Thiam Hien. The lawyer was "an
extraordinary man," said Lev, who taped hours of interviews with
him before Yap died in 1989. Yap is best known as an advocate of
human rights, long before it became part of official jargon.

There are more studies on Lev's list: he says he still wants
to understand more about Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia,
including developing his interest in Islamic courts.

Another wish is to conduct research on women's organizations
here and their changing position in society. The change, he said,
was "quite confusing" to men, both in Indonesia and America.

Theater

In his tiring time here, with several appointments every day,
Lev mostly stayed at the home of his friend, the noted lawyer
Adnan Buyung Nasution. No time to watch his favorite funny
Javanese ludruk theater comedies or tour the sites. Besides,
"I've never thought of myself as a tourist here."

The ludruk brings home Lev's "disappointment" of not fully
understanding the language, as there was never time to study it.

It sounds that he is closer to Indonesia than to Russia,
whence his parents hail, even though he is only of the second
generation of immigrants. His father Louis, a carpenter, and his
mother Bessie, a full-time homemaker and mother of five, arrived
in the States in 1930. Lev was the youngest. "I never knew her
full name, she only began to learn to sign her name after my
father died."

As of Tuesday Lev had not decided what to take home as
souvenirs. An exception was his daughter Claire, who only asked
for sarongs "because she had ripped her old ones." His son Louis
plays the violin in the orchestra in Pittsburgh, "and he's got so
many violins already." Meanwhile his wife Arlene, he says, is
busy preparing a painting exhibition.

During his stay Lev says he most enjoyed meeting old friends
and eating. All kinds of foods, he said, including rendang which
he's not supposed to consume a lot of given his lingering
cholesterol problem, "But I do."

Back home, Lev will resume teaching at Seattle's University of
Washington. And he won't be far from Indonesian food. "When we
sit down to something comfortable it's likely to be Indonesian."
Lev does a lot of the cooking and spices are easy to find now, he
says; bubur ayam or chicken porridge often appears at breakfast
while his desire for durian can be satiated somewhat with that
from Thailand.

That, said Lev, is an example of "globalization" which he
clearly benefits from. But he's old-fashioned when it comes to
television, from which millions globally have benefited.

"It's hard for me to believe something (reported) on TV until
I've read about it." Lev would be most disliked as a parent these
days; when Claire and Louis were young, they were only allowed to
watch television for an hour a week!

"Students read less now," and this, he insists, is partly
because of too much TV. Maybe he has a point. A bit more reading,
particularly of past mistakes and less "potato couching,"
perhaps, would help to inspire the imagination we seem to need
more of now.