About The Nation That We Are

The last couple of weeks, media and people in general has been taken aback by the news of how our so-called people representatives in the governmental institution had been endlessly finding justification on what they think they deserve and need to be able to fully perform their duties. If you remember, some months ago, they persistently argued on how the house of representatives building had no longer sufficient to fulfill the need of over 500 congressmen. (I would have said countrymen, but that is a big word and I have to say that I do not think that these men (and women) are quite big enough to live up the word.) And so they wanted to build a new building, quite the state of the art I may say, with each congressmen (and women) getting their own working room in an area that as big as the land where my house was built on. Seriously. Anyways, the idea broke and the people were against it. Here and there were pro’s and cons’. You could guess the pro’s didn’t come from the people, indeed. The project was postponed (not canceled, postponed) to (not hopefully) a later date.

I guess the congressmen and women learnt the lesson: never share any idea of spending money on a project with the public. Tell them after the project is executed, thus when pro’s and con’s appears, it’s done anyway thus it would be less likely that the facility (may that be room, chairs, gadgets, vehicles) could be retrieved. And so they did. They built a new room in the building. It cost them 20 billion rupiahs, approximately USD 2.2 billion, for that one room. It had state-of-the-art LCD screens (three of them), new interior designs, and chairs that each cost 24 million rupiah (USD 2,500). You would expect the room would serve a part of the congress that had the least the consideration on spending money, right? Well, not quite. Ironically, it was a specific room for the Congress Budget Team. So, there. For the zillion times, this government and parts of the people failed the nation.

But the story has never stopped there. Be it lousy government and policy that might appear in many dimensions, be it the skepticism that appears in the media – now being so harshly shared throughout the internet, the hope had never completely ceased. With 350 years of never having a say of the land and people that was supposed to be theirs, our finding fathers not only left us to be independent but also this: the hope to continue whatever fight they have, the believe that it wouldn’t be in vain. That struggle is just a phase of the work. That believing does not necessarily mean seeing. And that seeing does not mean end, it’s the start of another phase. It was a legacy that had been successfully remained through generations, because now, even with the hypocrisy that filled the governments who only show that they care and take actions for mere political goals – you always find the outcry, no matter how small, to believe. You see it in the smile the priest of a small congregation in Bogor to the people who casted them out of the congregation they legally have, you hear it in the voices of the Indonesia Raya sang in a ceremony of the SD students in West Papua, you see it in the eye of the Maumere guide who made every fellow Indonesia who come to his village, a brother; you feel it in the non-Chinese being respectfully asked permission to join the ceremony of a Chinese New Year, and you put it on the young who went to teach and share lives at the least expected schools in the least comfortable distance. They appear in the midst of the skepticism and it helped to avoid numbness. I have not find any equal eagerness to fight for the nation they are as much that I see it in Indonesia. It’s just too strong and it keeps me mesmerized.

So, it always end like this. We pull things together again in the hope that this time we raised enough countrymen to eventually let us stand on our feet with our hands reaching the right way.