Inactive public liability to prosperity

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): Francis Fukuyama, in his 1995 book Trust, says that in the near future no society will be able to generate prosperity without trust.

Trust is the essential element of all endeavors, including economic. He calls trust among members of the society "social capital". And in the near future, "capital" no longer means land, money or machinery, but human knowledge. This knowledge is the most important element in modern capital. Fukuyama refers to it as "human capital". Thus human capital and social capital -- interaction among members of society based on trust -- is of paramount importance in generating prosperity within the next stage of development.

But how do we secure trust, and how do we preserve it?

In our society trust, or public trust to be more specific, is of late a scarce commodity. After repeated incidents that have betrayed trust in public officials, it has become hard to generate trust and respect in the wider community. This erosion of public trust is both a misuse and abuse of power.

Stories of the misuse and abuse of power abound in our society. It has been said that a characteristic of those who abuse power is the tendency to be uncritically loyal to the system while still in power, but critical of it and cynical after being demoted or dethroned.

I have always been outside the power system. Not that I did not aspire to powerful positions in the past; to say so would be a lie. The reason for this aspiration was very simple: I thought, and still think, that I could not afford to pay the price of a powerful position. There were, however, occasions in my life where I was close to those who held high-ranking power. I was once even a ghostwriter for a cabinet minister.

Based on personal experiences with personalities who succeeded in acquiring power, I have come to the conclusion that the one factor determining whether or not a person will talk and behave differently before and after losing power is personal integrity.

Power works in this instance like toxin, and personal integrity works like antitoxin. Only persons with high personal integrity are able to control themselves in exercising their power.

Those lacking personal integrity will be easily swept away by power entrusted to them. Persons of this type, once free of power, will soon discover that without office they mean nothing in their society. It is then that they try to regain their personal significance through talks that can attract support from society.

How do we explain this phenomenon?

When you hold a public office in this country, you move into a house of power. As long as you remain within the power system, you are well protected. Even when a mistake is made, you are still protected.

Living like this for five or 10 years brings changes to your self-perception. Gradually you begin to think that power entrusted to you by your office is your personal power. The distinction between official and personal power becomes blurred. And without being checked by personal integrity -- the source of personal honor -- the difference between office and personal money can also become blurred.

To save yourself from further damage, the best thing to do at this juncture is quit. But who wants to, or can, quit their office in this society? Thus you continue to live in a world where reality and illusion are inextricably mixed.

It is for this reason that persons without personal integrity soon experience problems once outside the power system. They have lost much of their respectability and much, if not their entire, trustworthiness as a consequence of frequent power abuses. To regain these two precious assets they then try to play the role of national hero. They sometimes even criticize the very policies they adopted and expounded when still in power.

A disturbing element is that within our society power is looked upon as a condition which legitimizes everything, including corruption, collusion and even hypocrisy. This view comes from the traditional assumption that only respectable and trustworthy people acquire positions of power. Ascendance to such a position is seen as proof of trustworthiness and respectability.

After repeated cases of misuse and abuse of power by public officials, however, public perception of power, trust and respect has gradually changed. Public trust and respect for public officials is no longer determined by the hierarchical value of the position they occupy. After a certain period it is shaped by public perception regarding the appropriateness of the way they handle their power.

Nowadays, those perceived as abusing the power they hold are silently ignored, getting at best only contrived trust and sham respect. Genuine trust and respect elude them. The problem in this case is that within our society knowing the difference between genuine respect and imitation of respect is not easy. It is equally difficult to determine whether the public genuinely trust a powerful official, or whether they are merely being politically and bureaucratically correct.

These days it is difficult to say whether an opinion expressed by a powerful official is really accepted by the public or merely tolerated. The common reaction to statements that are not really convincing is silence. And there is no way to tell the meaning of this silence; it can be either acceptance or rejection. If you define "acceptance" as the absence of active rejection, then silence denotes acceptance. But if you define "acceptance" as the act of embracing and adopting a stated view, then silence denotes rejection.

Silence can perhaps be best defined as a sign of passivity and indifference. Thus a statement met with public silence is in reality perhaps neither accepted nor rejected. It is just there, untouched, unknown and uncared for.

What is the significance of this insight?

It is that in this modern time passive and inactive public will never be able to sustain a society trying to generate prosperity. In a modern society the public must, to a certain extent, be involved in the management of society. In this modern time we simply cannot afford to have public officials constantly offending public sensibilities and eroding public trust in the government.