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.