Justice Twice

Today, June 1. A national holiday. A day when the Indonesian nation opens the cabinet of history, wipes away dust from old photographs, and blows away the debris clinging to the frames of memory. We recall how 81 years ago, Bung Karno wove together national aspirations like an architect gathering stones from various hills to build a grand house named Indonesia, laying its foundation as Pancasila. As today is Pancasila Day, when Bung Karno stood before BPUPKI to plant the seeds of ideas that grew into a towering tree sheltering over 280 million people, I idly undertook a task usually reserved for linguists or coffee-addled minds: counting the words in Pancasila’s five principles. The result is striking: five sentences, 29 words, and approximately 161 characters if numbers 1 to 5 are excluded. Imagine: a nation of thousands of islands, hundreds of languages, thousands of traditions, and millions of political debates, all anchored in just 29 words—no longer than a hastily scribbled social media post before lunch. More striking still, among these 29 words is the only family of words appearing twice: the root ‘adil’. It first appears in the second principle: ‘Just and Civilised Humanity.’ The second in the fifth: ‘Social Justice for All Indonesians.’ See how, from just 29 words, ‘adil’ claims two honorary seats—as if it’s not merely a passenger but a board member in the grand corporation called the Republic of Indonesia. One as a quality. One as an ideal. One guards the human heart. One steers the nation’s course. One is the compass. One is the destination. The nation’s founders weren’t solving crosswords—they were tucking a message in a bottle and casting it into the ocean of the future. It has now washed up on our shore. This nation needs more than just good people; it needs good systems. For individuals can be just, but the state may not. Conversely, a country might have laws that seem fair, with clauses neatly arranged like a luxury shop display. Yet enforcement often falls to people treating the law like a restaurant menu—picking what they like and discarding what’s unprofitable. Hence ‘adil’ appears twice—as if the founders said, ‘Don’t just fix the people; fix the house they live in.’ For a virtuous person in a broken system often ends up like a clean fish thrown into a muddy pond. Sadly, Indonesia’s historical journey often resembles a relay race where the baton is called ‘justice’, yet some runners take it home, display it in the living room, and claim victory. We have the second principle on just and civilised humanity, yet each year brings cases of bullying, child violence, human trafficking, harassment, migrant worker exploitation, and assaults on human dignity. On social media, people sometimes turn into beasts fiercer than tigers. Tigers hunt only when hungry; some netizens prey daily even when full, hunting not for survival but to entertain algorithms. Then there’s the fifth principle on social justice—the beginning of this nation’s lengthy novel, one that could fill multiple volumes. Farmers grow rice but rarely see the profits; fishermen live by the sea yet know debt better than their catch. Contract teachers light candles of knowledge for the young each day, while their own wallets flicker like emergency lights running low on power. Children in remote areas travel to school with more heroism than some official business trips. Expressways gleam like mirrors, while village roads jolt vehicles as if in a pencak silat training session. Skyscrapers tower as if racing to touch clouds, yet beneath their shadows, homes struggle to reach an electric cable. Corruptors steal enough to build schools, hospitals, and bridges, yet only construct one thing: distrust. Ordinary citizens lose motorbikes and wander police desks like characters in a game of snakes and ladders, always returning to the start. In the legal world, metaphors of justice grow even more dramatic. The statue of Lady Justice is depicted with blindfolded eyes to see no one. But in developing nations, citizens suspect it’s not Lady Justice’s eyes that are covered, but her internet connection. Some feel the law works like automatic doors in luxury hotels: for those in suits with influence, doors open before they touch the handle; for those in flip-flops with bad luck, doors pretend not to see them.