Student gang fights, presidential contest, and academic tradition

Khairil Azhar

This country is really full of something comical but tragic as well. But it is logically conceivable if we take a look at what makes a joke tasty. A joke actually tells the truth on one side but comically is intended to invite laughter on the other one. We are touched firstly by the truth it represents but then we laugh at it because it also represents a kind of stupidity with entertaining entity to certain extent.
This comical point of view possibly will make us more relaxed looking at how comical and tragic the heating up presidential contest is, especially when it is mixed or compared with how violence with its varied forms as well as any other tragic events endlessly take place. But to make ourselves focus in this discussion, we only will compare it with the student gang fights. So please sit back and relax.
With less than one month ahead for the presidential election day, the candidates have been so busy in a competition of unveiling the minuses of their opponents. For instance, SBY barely scolded his competitors as businessmen who would be potentially stir up the business affairs with governmental duties as it had been done in the previous regime. According to his sense of view it was this tendency had facilitated and fertilized corruptions and underdevelopments in Soeharto era.
But JK the businessman did not remain in defense calmly and quietly. He immediately reacted with a counter attack telling that doubtful candidate will make the country left behind and fail to make quick and proper decisions. Mega and Prabowo did relatively the same thing. With their people oriented economy jargon, they accused the liberal or neo-liberal approach to political economy would only make the poverty increases and prosperity becomes farther away.
This debat kusir (endless and fruitless debates) style or tendency unsurprisingly has been the similar plot behind the scene of the student gang fights. The students, with their dynamic young blood tried to represent themselves with the quickest—in spite of absurd—way of reacting to any challenges, regardless whether they are potentially heading to physical conflicts or not. Without feeling guilty they then tried to solve their social problem with prejudices and accusations and as we have often seen many of the conflicts turned to be physical challenges and clashes. And in the end actually, the problems remained unfinished and become more rooted, latent and unsolvable. The factual results then just wounded bodies and hearts as well as useless stiffened lying corpses.
And it is also about self-pride and arrogances. The presidential candidates with all they do to raise up themselves in front of the constituents embarrassingly forget their very being of human nature, i.e. their humbleness amid their inabilities to change the quality of life of the people so far with all the opportunities they have already had. Even they do not feel ashamed to exploit “God” in every humiliation they do regarding to their claims of success, when they start with whatever they do in the name of God and end it with the relatively same way.
SBY and his compatriots unhesitatingly claimed significant change has occurred in this four and a half year when actually starvation and malnutritious children are still everywhere in the country both in the cities and remote areas, from the streets of Jakarta to the Nusa Tenggara villages. JK and his teammates claimed that with his quick moves some critical conflicts have been solved because of his initiation and efforts when hardliners actually spread around and freedom is narrower in this country. And Mega-Pro promised the welfare for all the people with proportional state wealth sharing when actually both of them are the richest among the other candidates and they choose luxurious facilities to enjoy themselves.
The similar thing is also occurring among the conflicting students with their youthfully mockery style. Thoughtlessly they claim their campuses are the best and the others are within the lower classes. They thought inconsiderably themselves as the bravest when the others are losers and deserve only humiliations. And a slight and trivial reason is enough to fire up the already dried grass. As their exemplars did, i.e. the candidates of the country leaders, all proofs—whether historically proven or merely counterfeit ones—were collected as the weapons to attack their opponents.
And now let us talk about how all of these eventually need strategy.
As if they were outstanding tacticians, the students usually set up strategies to defeat “their enemies”. Fighting spirits were raised up using any possible ways—which is not really indifferent from what usually done to football players in the dressing rooms. This kind of motivating process is actually mostly intended for the juniors and rank and file in order to finish their “on-job training’ session as well as possible while the seniors or thinkers stood behind them. And in relation to this strategy are also included the financial cost and possible real weapons to be employed.
Back to our presidential candidates, surely with their own teammates, they certainly do the similar things. They definitely focus themselves to the strategies to win the contest and leave the other affairs such as their current duties as incumbents behind. Financial cost is not a problem because it is only about to count how much to spend and note it to make sure the same amount will get back plus its interest later when the contest is over. They also should prepare any possible weapons for sure when at the same time they have to veil as careful as possible the negative parts which probably are likely to cause bad images.
And the story continues that it is of course going to be so long to tell the whole story here.
Now let us see the other side of a comical story—which actually also makes the story more interesting, i.e. the answer of the question about the stupid part and try to find the answer how it should be.
With all what they have presented so far, both the students in gang fights and the presidential candidates, did they present the thing what they are actually for? Have the politicians, for example, who undeniably should be academically competent, showed up their excellences in analyzing economic critical fraud both quantitatively and qualitatively? Why did the students with their higher educational background contrarily sacrifice their time and energy for being criminals rather then true academicians? Did they harm their “imagined opponents” with many kinds of rude weapons because of intellectually accepted concepts which they struggle to establish?
Comically and tragically, the answer is “no”. As we everyday watch on TV, the campaigns unstoppably keep promising heavenly things to the people while at the same time explicitly and implicitly curse the others as incapable and vice versa. Even the debates between the candidates are not as interesting as the ones conducted among the observers who are more academically capable but unfortunately who enjoy themselves in the ivory towers. Even one of my friends said that some of the debates were not more than coffee shop talks or arisan ibu-ibu (housewives talks).
It is of course too luxurious then for instance to hope the same debates occurred among the youths in 1920s which in turn in 1928 born Sumpah Pemuda amid the Dutch colonialism and illiteracy tyranny. It is a daydream to have figures like Mohammad Yamin or Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana come back and heat up more academically the discussions with their nationalism versus internationalism or their traditions versus modernity points of view. Or it is almost impossible to expect someone like Tan Malaka with his mysterious life reborn and author another contemporarily fit political manifesto beside his Naar de Republik which was extremely incredible for his time and recognized by academicians all over the world.
The similar thing is also taking place among the student gang fighters. They are registered and officially pay their occasionally very expensive tuition fee while at the same time they just spend all the cost for the sake of the others. Many of them are remote of lively academic environments and are busy with everything trivial like youth lifestyle or wealth competition. We can count with only fingers the campuses which deliberately facilitate their students with discussions exploring the current or social issues that actually related to their real life. If there are fertile environments found there, most of them are established and maintained by external organizations or groups which are loosely separated from the campuses. And albeit they are definitely effective there are small amount of students only are incorporated and participating.
Most of the campuses, in the end, failed to be democratic sphere where the students actually should learn appropriately the way how to respect the others while at the same time reciprocally are respected in any circumstances. In this context, they schools also failed to facilitate the full of passion youths with the right materials of life learning and just tried to impose dried technical working skills without proper values and consciousness. The students eventually just become one dimensional robots if they are not become the prisoners of their time.
Our current presidential contest more or less is reflecting the similar thing. Their loud yell to democracy has just become a kind of lipstick, a meaningless jargon. Most of their campaign contents seem to be powerless to deal with the current multidimensional crisis while most of them are rhetoric and lack of rigorous analysis. Even their spending of trillions for the two consecutive elections will be like pouring the water into the desert. And tragically the people again have to carry the burden made on their seemingly restless shoulders.
Based on the above comical and tragic stories it is not an exaggeration to say that we are with the sound mind just and only need to do our best, hoping that the student gang fights and the presidential contest are actually only the partial representation of the country which intellectually, academically and morally has degraded into a lower stage. Hopefully, with the end of the election feast next month, new consciousness may come into our minds and enlighten our next steps.