Time has come to cure our ailing society

By Rahayu Ratnaningsih

JAKARTA (JP): The series of recent disasters befalling us should prompt us to ponder what has gone wrong with Indonesian society.

The Gurita ferry catastrophe in Aceh, the bus accident on the Bogor toll road, and the Bogor shopping center fire, all killed many people and are fresh in our minds.

What is left to make us proud as Indonesians if ignorance, negligence, carelessness, indifference, indiscipline, corruption, opportunism and selfishness feature so highly in our society?

Indifference makes it impossible for us to walk safely and conveniently on the sidewalks. In fact, sidewalks are considered such an inappropriate luxury, the need of which is regarded as something trivial, that they are transformed into markets.

Only in Indonesia can traders occupy half a main road, such as those in Tangerang. Indifference continues until a catastrophe pricks our conscience, then it is soon wiped from our memory. The cycle is then repeated. When another calamity happens the whole nation will mourn and regard it as a national tragedy and submissively say: "This is God's will."

Like people from middle eastern countries, we are characterized by our external locus of control. What happens to us in life is due to luck or chance -- by takdir, our favorite word which means fate.

Research indicates that people with an external locus of control are less likely to take responsibility for the consequences of their own behavior and more likely to rely on external influences. Internals, on the other hand, are more likely to rely on their own internal standards of right and wrong to guide their behavior. Most developed and western countries share this particular trait.

So everything tends to be seen as God's will, partly because Indonesian people's religiosity requires our total submission to God by not questioning His power and authority.

It is a worry because we are too ignorant and indifferent to notice that the human sacrifice in the series of accidents were indeed unnecessary and could have been avoided if we had had a little discipline and concern for public order and safety.

How can we be concerned with other people's safety when we often don't really cherish our own? Look at the people who sit on trains' roofs. They even walk along them when the trains are running, oblivious to he real danger of being killed. No one stops them from doing it, not even the railway officials. The officials perhaps have tried in the past without success.

Not only the common people lack concern for their own or other's safety. High government officials lack it too. Sewers remain uncovered, posing a significant danger to pedestrians. We don't even bother to refill excavations made to install telephone cables, making the roads traps for motorists.

Casualties are uncountable, but the districts' mayors still enjoy their morning coffee while reading their residents' complaints in the newspaper. Seeking justice is futile.

Being an Indonesian mayor is a piece of cake. Their counterparts in developed countries can easily be liable for millions of dollars if a citizen is injured, however slightly, by faulty workmanship in their district.

Indifference is so prevalent here, that the leaders don't even address it. Many of our officials are corrupt and don't understand the concept of leading by example.

Our feudalistic and patriarchal culture is rooted so deeply that our leaders are often arrogant even when facts show they are to blame for casualties.

The Bogor mayor is a case in point. He was quoted on the worsening traffic jams prior to the Pasar Anyar inferno as saying: "Sidewalk traders are to be expected. It's a perfectly appropriate thing to occur."

Then, after the recent shopping center fire, he insisted much too early that because he was mayor people had to believe there were only ten human bodies and one cat found.

The fire unveiled the sorry condition of our public buildings. It is now time to stop leniency towards safety violations. The same story repeats itself every time a fire breaks out: the fire squads fail to extinguish the blaze because of the inadequacy of the built-in fire control devices.

It isn't difficult to find those responsible, but again we are too indifferent to make fuss about it. We are too forgiving and too reserved to question. It shows once again the opportunistic and corrupt mentality of our entrepreneurs and officials. Both are only interested in their own well being. Are we going to preserve this attitude or are we going to work things out?