Yohanes Sulaiman – Early on Saturday, on Twitter, I read the news about how Roy Suryo, Democratic Party lawmaker, managed to delay the 6:15 a.m. flight of Lion Air to Yogyakarta. Even though his ticket was for the 7:45 a.m. flight, he refused to leave the plane, demanding to stay on board, the twitter user said. In the end, Suryo apologized and left the plane, claiming Lion Air was responsible for the mistake.
Coupled with other horror stories on how public officials and lawmakers abused their position to demand unwarranted privileges or commit other conduct unbecoming a public servant, it is not surprising people are asking: "What is wrong with Indonesia?"
It is not far-fetched to argue that the problem originates from the mentality of our public officials.
The "I am never wrong" mentality is due to the fact that throughout history, Indonesian officials have only rarely been held accountable for their conduct. One reason was Indonesian culture holding any high officials in high regard. Another was colonialism.
Of course it is very easy to blame colonialism for everything wrong in Indonesia: from massive poverty, lack of education and disregard to the rule of law, to Indonesia's backwardness.
On the one hand, it cannot be denied that the Dutch and other imperial powers exploited Indonesia, carting off so much of its wealth to Europe and leaving Indonesia mired in poverty and saddled with huge debts at the 1949 Round Table Conference.
But on the other hand, it is clear that local officials also share part of the blame. The Dutch were only able to exploit Indonesia through their cooperation with local officials, the elites that managed to line their pockets at the expense of the masses.
The book "Max Havelaar," which is set during the implementation of the Cultivation System (Tanam Paksa), noted the wanton abuse of power by local regents and how the Dutch East Indies government protected abusers of power. The Dutch didn't really care about how the regents exploited the population, as long as they were loyal and the treasury was overflowing with money. Unfortunately, this mechanism turned out to be the biggest colonial legacy in Indonesian politics.
Colonialism taught the Indonesians that the Dutch would keep protecting any official, no matter how bad his conduct, as long as he cooperated with the Dutch government. In essence, it was a lesson in totalitarianism: officials need not be accountable to the people. The only people who matter are your superiors, who can fire you at a moment's notice. From the colonial days, public officials were not there to serve the people, but to serve the masters that would protect them when things went badly.
The other lesson, related to the first one, was: "might makes right."
Before the arrival of the Dutch, there was no kingdom that completely ruled Java, let alone a country as big as Indonesia. Even the mighty Sultan Agung of Mataram was unable to completely pacify his kingdom, especially after his defeat at Batavia in the late 1620s. As a result, Javanese kings had to rely on the policy of deliberation to achieve consensus (musyawarah-mufakat), to mollify any possible critics of planned policy, as many were capable of launching a rebellion.
This was Indonesian-style democracy: the inability of any ruler to dominate all of his opponents created some sort of safeguard that prevented wanton abuse of power. The Dutch, through their relatively efficient organization and firepower, managed to bypass this barrier and could rule without musyawarah-mufakat. This reinforced the first lesson, that as long as an official was backed by a powerful organization, the chances of him getting overthrown were miniscule.
These lessons were further reinforced during the authoritarian rule of both President Sukarno and President Suharto – during which only those with the necessary connections could achieve a top position – and became ingrained in the Indonesian mind-set.
Not surprisingly, with cronyism as the only qualification required to hold a position, professionalism and the rule of law were totally undermined and became irrelevant. Indonesian officialdom now has the aura of impunity.
This mentality has two major effects. First, there is a huge chasm between public officials and the people they are supposed to serve, leading officials to behave egregiously. Officials consider themselves not mere public servants, but part of the nobility, the elite to be adored and served at a moment's notice. With this in mind, it is not surprising that so many people complain about public officials and members of parliament being completely out of touch with regular people. They think they live in their own kingdoms.
The second – and most worrisome – effect is that since the rule of law has since long been undermined and easy to bypass, provided that an official believes he or she has enough supporters, he or she can attempt to change rules at will. Never mind using the proper channels.
In Indonesia, might still makes right, so it is important for someone who is seriously interested in running for public office to have recourse to a strong organization that is capable of committing acts of violence or at least threaten political opponents.
We can see the excesses already, such as in the case of violent, religious-based mass organizations that have recently attacked minorities such as the Ahmadiyah sect, with the aim of imposing their will.
Coupled with this, the impeachment discourse being promoted by certain groups is also worrisome. Impeachment, instead of being a last-resort tool to limit presidential abuse of power, is being used to coerce the president into doing things that only a very small part of the population supports.
We should remember that democracy only works when everybody is equal before the law and protected from abuse. That includes abuse by public officials.
[Yohanes Sulaiman is a lecturer at the Indonesian National Defense University and a researcher at the Global Nexus Institute.]