This is Surya Paloh's Assessment of Current Political Practices

Surabaya (ANTARA) - Chairman of the NasDem Party, Surya Paloh, assesses that political practices in Indonesia are increasingly drifting away from ideal values, marked by the strengthening of commotion in the public sphere without accompanying substantive depth. “What we see today is not a wealth of thought, but a poverty of reasoning on display. The public space is increasingly noisy with baseless opinions, directionless debates, and commotion lacking substance,” said Surya Paloh while attending the inauguration of Dossy Iskandar Prasetyo as a professor at Bhayangkara University in Surabaya, East Java, on Wednesday. According to Surya Paloh, the current public discourse tends to shift from competing ideas to mere spectacles of sensation. “Debates are superficial and drifting away from strategic issues that should be the common focus,” he stated. In such conditions, basic values such as honesty, justice, and truth, in his view, often undergo simplification to the point of losing substantial meaning. Surya Paloh assesses that the problems faced by the nation do not solely lie in institutional weaknesses, but are rooted in a crisis of character. He criticises the public’s tendency to more frequently seek parties to blame without balancing it with self-reflection. He also reminds of the importance of the role of universities in remaining relevant in addressing the challenges of the times. He hopes that campuses can produce great, applicable ideas and make knowledge a tool for social correction and a driver of change. Meanwhile, in his scientific speech, Prof. Dossy raised the theme “Normative Ideas of Political Parties in the Context of the Constitution and Democratic Ideals”. He added that those ideas should serve as a reflection on the current state of political practices.