Living in halfway mode
Not wanting to elaborate on all the details, and despite various opinions already having been raised concerning all possible causes of the nation's plight, it seems to me that the situation our nation currently faces is caused by too many things being left only half done.
Our half-learned knowledge, skills, science, technology, and maybe religion, or various degrees either halfway-up, halfway in the middle, or halfway-down, have led us to no common perception on most things, no matter how perfect the communication is. Consequently, we become halfhearted in conducting discussions or dialogs to find out the roots of our problems.
Moreover, we are half-afraid of touching the "core" of things, we feel safe just playing around the surface -- either on the "skin" or the "hairs". With all the above in the background, unfortunately, we keep moving forward. We move forward so fast but in the blind spirit of "Ever Onward, Never Retreat". To tackle encountered problems, we just rely on the short-term "fire extinguisher" approach and leave the problems half-resolved.
In executing agreed upon planning, we are mostly half- committed, and we tend to spend our "other half" doing unnecessary things, though we mostly never completely set things up. We are so half-concerned to analyze and evaluate process output and implement feedback systems through which, once abrupt changes occur, we would come to a crazily uncontrolled-and- vacillating situation, close enough to run-away.
We have our 1945 Constitution which, like it or not, is not perfect. However, since 1959 our People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) has only been working on its "skin", to issue decrees instead of touching the "core", to directly revise related articles or clauses. This has left the 1945 Constitution fundamentally only "half done". With our half-learned political education we have since 1945 been debating the definition and formulation of our democracy, as well as structuring its institutions.
During the past 32 years, disregarding the feedback system, we living lives structured by five-year plans. But today, everything is chaotic and, I believe, nobody knows where we really are now. Instead of mending, repairing and forcing existing government structural institutions to function properly, we prefer to simply establish new functional teams, committees, commissions and councils, by doing which instead of focusing we just keep blurring our responsibilities.
On the latest developments on the nationalism front, in the near future our children, up to university-age, might be banned from studying abroad despite the fact that inter-school and inter-village street brawls involving people who finished their education at home are becoming regular occurrences.
Ironically, despite our present political and economic turmoil, most of our present leaders and professionals are foreign graduates, either of formal educational institutions (colleges and universities) or of short-term, informal (training, courses, and seminars).
If we are realistic and dare to touch the "core", in my personal opinion the opposite way sounds more reasonable, i.e. to encourage, subsidize and coordinate parents to send their children to study abroad from kindergarten to high school and get them back to enter university locally. From the cost point of view, such a proposal would be less expensive since in many developed countries, schooling from kindergarten to high school is free of charge.
It is of my deep concern as a common citizen of this country that if we keep living in halfway mode, I am afraid we will remain a half-baked nation indefinitely.
ATTILA RAHAYOE
Bekasi, West Java