Jakarta's commercial interests put education under siege

Jakarta's commercial interests put education under siege

B. Herry-Priyono, Jakarta

Looking at The Jakarta Post headline picture of the students
of State Junior High School SMP 56 studying in the open air (The
Jakarta Post, April 20) produced a feeling like a knife cutting
too close to the bone. The reasons why they were forced outside
are of course complex. The case of the Junior High School on Jl.
Melawai Raya, South Jakarta, is only one of the stories of how
the prevailing political-economic logic squeezes out any other
logic that stands in its way.

As widely reported, the story began in 2000 with a land-swap
deal between the Ministry of Education and a company called PT.
Tata Disantara, owned by Abdul Latief, a former minister of
manpower.

In brief, the commercially strategic school grounds were
bartered for sites in Jeruk Purut and Bintaro, both in South
Jakarta. The legality of the swap notwithstanding, the Jakarta
Administration under Governor Sutiyoso sent 16 vans full of city
public order officers to seize the school grounds by force early
on Sunday, April 18. Thus, the students were forced to study
outdoors and the case became a source of major public disquiet.

Sutiyoso now appears intent on suing the defiant teachers (The
Jakarta Post April 20). To see the issue in terms of the legality
of the swap, as the officials of both the Jakarta city
administration and the Ministry of Education do, is misplaced. As
in many other cases in this country, legality can easily be
invented, or be bought with a few well-directed bribes.

For sure, land swaps are not unusual in the politico-economic
game of property rights. What is outrageous, however, is how the
raison d'etre of education has easily been squeezed out by the
imperative of money; that is, the ease with which the prospect of
financial gain can dictate public policy in crucial areas such as
the education of children.

What is tragic is that the case has emerged against the
backdrop of the appalling state of education in Indonesia. If
such a tragedy can easily happen under our noses in Jakarta, we
can imagine how similar cases can easily take place in remote
areas. Instead of halting the free fall of education into the
abyss, our policy makers seem to have a penchant for accelerating
its downfall.

It was the late Pierre Bourdieu, that renowned French thinker,
who in 1991 poignantly warned us of the dangers embodied in cases
like the SMP 56 one. The rise of neo-liberal political-economic
obsessions not only shatters our sense of shared life, but also
paralyzes many other spheres of life whose raisons d'etre are
non-economic and non-financial in nature.

This is how it works. Having commercialized more and more
areas of life, the neo-liberal and business logic penetrates deep
into the inner sanctum of government. Instead of being united in
the pursuit of the public interest, government ministries,
departments and agencies are divided by revenue imperatives.
Sharp tensions then arise between what Bourdieu calls "the left
hand of the state" and "the right hand of the state".

The right hand of the state refers to a set of agents whose
main tasks are to generate revenue, e.g., the central bank,
Ministry of Finance, tax office, etc. The left hand of the state
is a set of agents within the state that mainly deal with the
administration of social spending. These are the spending
ministries, represented by the ministries of education, public
health, labor, housing, etc.

Instead of working shoulder to shoulder, the neo-liberal logic
that has first shaped the right hand of the state in turn
dictates the working of the left hand. As a result, the
ministries of education, public health, labor, and the like are
forced to conform, or else they die of financial misery.
According to Bourdieu: "The right hand no longer knows, or,
worse, no longer really wants to know what the left hand does. In
any case, it does not want to pay for it".

Where are the other state agencies like the police, courts and
military? Instead of counterbalancing the tension between these
two hands of the state, they become, in Bourdieu's words, "the
repressive arm of the state", as they are also dominated by the
revenue imperative. In practical terms, they turn themselves into
thugs who execute operations in the field, or as Indonesians
would say, they are little better than preman.

This seems to be the sort of political-economic drama that is
being staged in the takeover of SMP 56. So, in many respects,
approaching the problem by adhering to legal procedures is beside
the point. First, legal procedure can easily be manufactured if
the right price is paid. Second, legal procedure is a poor guide
to the issue as to why the land-swap dispute arose in the first
place.

It is an unhappy fact that, having failed to address these two
problems, policy makers simply sent public order officers to
seize the SMP 56 school. This augurs badly for the post-election
era.

With the likely return of the military backed up by the
immense force of money, the power of the purse will then be
complemented by the forces of coercive to further destroy more
and more areas of our shared life.

What then are general elections for? For school children like
the SMP 56 students and many of their counterparts, elections are
undoubtedly a time of high excitement. As for the rest, according
to Susan George, author of the highly acclaimed The Lugano
Report, "(Electoral) democracy is not as important as it once
was". What is it then? It is, in her words, "a decorative
facade".

But history is full of surprises. What if, like in Kampar,
Riau, the surprise took the form of a united front between
students and teachers that could eventually dislodge the governor
from his throne?

The writer is Postgraduate Lecturer at Driyarkara School of
Philosophy.