There is a routine, almost become habit in our society whenever a government policy is issued.
We talked about it so much. We are highly involved in so many group discussions. There will be some plenary seasons in the legislative and government sides following. But then we forget about it as if we were never discussing about it in an extreme way that a small issue may appear for days in main TV channels. We don’t even remember which party we really stand by.
We faced it almost everytime during our independece as a nation (or, at least as we perceived to be so).
But let’s look to a closer range of time. Rendering to a very long period will take us too far and may easily get distracted about what we are really talking about and giving concern on.
We have technology, gadgets, thus enabling us to access alternative information source aside of the main media channels or newspapers, but we never really take benefit from it. We quote so much on a single article of a rising up political commentator, many times we do not take time to take a while looking up his/her background and why he/she aspired the way he/she talked.
We have access to the very concrete of public concerns, but we leave those voices behind. We tend to be safe. We exhaustedly recite those boring debates, endless discussion and so many hoax-based conversation.
That’s the real face of our achievement as educated person.
We read fast, comment easily, but then remember nothing. Not even a single sticky post in our laptop or notes in our gadget to follow the sequence of the first tread we propose as public matter.
Let’s mirror to the latest presidential campaign that finally granted us Joko Widodo as a president.
It’s been more than a year. And, guess what?
Instead of pouring our energy and mind to the current government policies, it took so much of our conversations everywhere only to look for a stable preferential: Joko Widodo or Prabowo Subianto. KMP or KIH. The debates seem to last forever.
This is exactly the two-sided realm of politics: One that it’s to blown up, another to blow down. It is not right or wrong. Relativity of perspectives, even when certain party has been so close to be found out as comitting a logical fallacy on sputting out their voices, still rules.
What?
Doesn’t the government hold the main role and thus becoming the ruler?
Yep. If you just read the timelines of Metro TV and TV One, you may see how ridiculous how they make standing policy.
And, if I am not mistaken, mass media even made it worse. It blurrs who the current government is.
As aforementioned, we read fast but remember anything. And it is the noises that brought us that way, even until nowadays when we hardly ever listened the name Prabowo mentioned in mainstream media anymore in these latest months.
How come that noise distract us?
Yes. Because those noises are made, duplicated, and thrown away in mass media thrillion times onver and over.
We hardly even remember where the voluntary fund raised for Joko Widodo and Jusuf Kalla kept in to bank account.
They know it.
Whenever I say “they”, I do mean those who hold the real power: Parties who really take control to open and close the media blowing up. It can be the government, or the opposite political party or coalition, so they said. They have thousand doctors and politics to analyze what people has talked, which may lead them to self-consciousness of current situation. They won’t let the people even think about themselves. They have intelligents to spy rising up people’s choice. Whenever it is necessary to shut him/her down, they will do it. They will keep making those noises to distract us?
Who makes the noises, then?
Right: The powerful.
Thank God, there seems to be still a single metrics that hold the power over the over-noised circumstance of our politics, here in this republic: It is the conscience of the public itself. Whenever an issue (be it bad issue or good) gave no impact, especially as apprehended directly to the common good, it will be gone. Probably not gone forever, though. It may come again, but the wave’s stream will be constituted by that conscience of the public. Feed the people on issues and news about Joko Widodo everyday, then voices and noises will come along, but people who reads will always know that: nothing really has changed.
Some voiced on frogs he funded, on birds he liberated.
Some will keep hating him as if he was to blame for all these downturn economics power.
Some will put tricks and disguide the people as if it is right to give more damn concern on the way he spoke English than on how he had pacified the ruling party, the quarreling legislative members.
But people still holds this mind: Jokowi is still the president.
Photo by PunkRockLibertarians
Written while sipping the last drops of Kapal Api coffee – Kebayoran Lama
Donald Haromunthe
