'There's no appropriate method to measure loyalty'

Starting July 1, the government will screen all civil servants to ensure their loyalty to the unitary state of Indonesia (NKRI). Senior psychologist Sartono Mukadis, who owns Persodata psychology consultancy in Jakarta and Batam, shared his opinion about the controversial issue with The Jakarta Post's Soeryo Winoto.

Question: What's the criteria for citizens' loyalty to the state?

Answer: Wait -- it's not an easy question to answer, because the word "loyalty" always follows cultural transformation. The word remains, but the interpretation changes. During the New Order era, loyalty had its own meaning.

There's a proverbial saying: Don't use your rice bowl as a chamber pot, too. This is the real meaning of loyalty. If you steal something from the place where you work, then you are not a loyal person.

Your answer implies that corrupt officials are people who have no loyalty nor love for the government, as they have tormented the state and the people. Your comments?

Absolutely. People who work for a company and steal something from another place, they are just criminals. But if they steal from the place they depend upon for their lives, they are useless people.

The country is one of the most corrupt in the world, but many corruptionists are still walking around, free from law and punishment. How do you view this?

Nowadays, the meaning of loyalty has been reduced into a narrower definition, in which it focuses on individuals, superiors or regimes.

To some extent, it began with a "militaristic" doctrine, which is not seen to be negative. In a war, soldiers are forced to obey and abide by their commanders' orders or instructions; questions would be asked after the war.

This definition has been infiltrating all aspects of life to some degree.

If I come across people who say that they want to quit their jobs because their new boss is so difficult or arrogant that they have to quit being loyal, I would say that such persons have pseudo loyalty. They have the spirit of a peasant, and have no respect for themselves.

Many say that someone's true loyalty is revealed when he or she is facing a life-or-death situation. What is your opinion?

I don't agree with such an opinion, but I respect it. That's a very extreme situation. During the war for independence, there were many people grouped in cooperative and non-cooperative movements just because they didn't know or were not well-informed about the fight for independence. Many of them changed their principles and became more loyal to the Republic after they found out what was really behind the fight for independence.

But, it could be right that the loyalty is revealed in a life- or-death situation. But that's very extreme.

During President Soeharto's era, civil servants were grouped in an official organization named Korpri, which prohibited them from saying anything against the government's policies. Is it a kind of loyalty or a kind of oppression?

It is obvious that every citizen was forced to be loyal to the regime. There must be a difference between the state or administration, and the government or ruler.

The most dangerous thing we have learned from the past is this practice of measuring civil servants' performance by the extent of their obedience to the rules set by their leaders. They were discouraged from expressing differences (in opinion, thought). Creativity and work experience were not taken into consideration to judge and appreciate their performance.

Things have changed now. We should develop our entrepreneurship skills for the sake of the system within which we work. Unfortunately, the government is now trying to move us away from the new paradigm.

The screening of civil servants planned by the government is therefore unacceptable.

It must be said, though, that civil servants (in Aceh) who receive their salaries from the republic, but work for the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), are disloyal people, and the authorities must find such people and punish them. That's it.

There are ways to find such people.

What do you think will be the results of the screening?

They will be biased. The civil servants will simply think that they have expressed their loyalty -- but loyalty to Harry Sabarno (Minister of Home Affairs), or Korpri, instead of to the system. Their loyalty has no buffer zone, and they are not allowed to have a buffer zone. Being loyal to the Republic of Indonesia is too great to define.

A specific analogy is that people work to the best of their abilities for their company, and not betray the company's goals.

Screening would only return us to the bureaucratic predicament of the past. We will be trapped in a situation where people have no will to be different, despite the fact that we've already lost one generation to the political and economic turmoil of several years ago.

However, many political elites or bureaucrats will take advantage from such blind loyalty by recruiting only those people who are "loyal" to them.

It's a kind of slavery in the political arena. Perhaps many of them would be uneasy with this terminology.

Is the government fooling the people by conducting such a screening?

Deception of the people is the right wording. The government is developing a sense of obedience among the people that is polar to creativity and entrepreneurship.

What the government wants is that people are loyal to the regime. Those who have creativity and a different stance will be shoved aside.

As a seasoned psychologist who runs a consultancy, do you have any specific academic methods or systems by which to measure people's loyalty to the state or a company?

There is no single device or system appropriate for that.

Several companies have asked me to quantify the loyalty level (of employees) in the overall result (of an interview or survey). What we have is an indirect measurement system, usually by conducting thorough interviews and assessing the level of loyalty. When employees say that they quit their job because their company was inferior or unqualified, then we know that such employees are not loyal people. They will do the same thing in the future when they quit again. Such people always place the blame on others, never on themselves.

Are multiple-choice or yes-or-no questions adequate for assessing the loyalty of civil servants to the government or state?

I will take my hat off if the system works. To put it another way, if the method is able to assess a citizen's loyalty, I would be the first person in line to buy the device or the system used by the government.

I don't want to sound prejudiced, but if a method, device or system able to detect and measure the level of loyalty in a person exists, I would have bought it already.