What we do expect for you, our new president

Khairil Azhar

Our beloved Indonesia has been sixty four years on the seventeenth of August 2009. Having achieved this age surely should have made it mature, compared to its younger neighbors such as Vietnam or Brunei and etcetera. With its own maturity, Indonesia should have been able to stand erect in front of any other countries with such a dignity and pride. Our Indonesia, after the long years of maturing process filled with conflicts and many kinds of sacrifice from its people, at least should have got such ability to sustain her people by herself.
If it is the fact, for instance, Indonesia does not have to embarrassingly let many of its citizens to behave as if they were beggars here and there in any other countries anymore. Indonesia does not have to see, for instance, how many of the migrant workers have become the victims of strange violence in the post-slavery era. If the maturing process has been successful, we also would not see anymore how the peasants in Sidoarjo fill their days with protests and demonstration because their lands are now being washed away by the mud.
But have we achieved this maturity with all of its advantages? This is the thing that we wish we could talk to you our next president.
Learning from the previous two long regimes ruled our country, firstly we really would like to say that it is enough to liken this country as merely a loaf of bread. You should manage yourself not to cut it into slices and give each slice to your sons, wife, relatives, friends and whoever has helped you to gain the seat—while at the same time the rest of the people of the country just get the remnants.
Please do not take the people as only your kawula, the servants who serve you with whatever you need and obey whatever you say such as the thing usually happened in the feudalistic era. It is also not anymore an era when a country is inherited by a husband to a wife or from a father to a son or sons as if it were a country with republic system but veiled with monarchial one for the sake of certain family or clan.
We also beg your willingness for not establishing another new sophisticated tyrannical regime with both visible and invisible repression causing mild violence to severe suffering of the people. It is enough to see the already huge pyramid of sacrifice in the past where million of innocent people buried underneath. Please you guarantee that there will be no more victims shot by the soldier or police guns such as the result of domestic conflict happened in Poso and Aceh.
From the bottom of our heart, our next president, we wish we could say enough to everyday look at millions of people living in poverty while you enjoy all luxurious things in the palace with your people. It is the time to more realistically realize the presence of the lost generation born and grown up because of lack of proper nutrition in many places of the country such as in the remote villages in Nusa Tenggara or along the streets of Jakarta.
And it is certainly so disturbing us, our next president, that at the same time so lot of foods and drinks are thrown out without feeling guilty at your houses or palaces because of the trivial reason such as how the wastefulness is just because you do not like the food or drink anymore.
Please try to look, mister president, at how most of the people of your country need nowadays not more than just three plates of rice and some glasses of water? Even for a single person, Sir, a humble man only needs less then a millionth of your expensive everyday living cost.
We also demand you to be honest our president. Please explain to us how your officially released wealth could afford the expensive campaign cost in your and your family member political careers. How did you finance your son’s success in the previous legislative election, for example, when your wealth was reportedly only a third of the cost? Where did you get the money for the current presidential campaign that the total is many times over the amount of the money you have?
And if you are financially supported by other parties, what did you say to the donators in return of what they have spent? How many percent of this country resource have you promised to be shared with them? Did you remind yourself that the thing you do to make you become the president has many consequences that more or less actually are burdened onto the shoulders of common people instead of onto the ones who are flattering you everyday?
Do not get upset, Sir. This is our right to ask the questions.
When we saw your campaigns and debates on TV screen, many of us actually felt very disappointed. You talk about the crops the peasants have harvested but for more than three years you seem to be not caring with more than a thousand acres of the paddy fields become the sea of mud in Sidoarjo. You also talk about the agricultural success when you let one of your people to cheat the peasants with the super paddy seeds but they then failed entirely to harvest.
You talked in your commercial about peace and freedom from Sabang to Merauke but you seem to not realize that too many of the minorities nowadays are in fear of having to do many things differently from what they are taught by their religious teachings or culturally inherited from their ancestors.
We are on the sideline of majority tyranny, Sir, where diversity has been gradually rhetoric and talk and the dominance is to show off the dangerous symbols and to repress alike.
Still on TV screen, Sir, in one of your commercials, we watch you enjoying the green and wide yard in your palace when at the same time fire is roasting thousands of acres of turf and forest from Sumatra to Papua islands. Many species have been killed this way while thousands of them are then in danger because they do not enjoy the greenery and freedom as before. Millions of the next generation would only enjoy the stories of the so-called green carpet of equator while at the same time they painstakingly live in the drying and heating up world.
You also should stop taking advantage of the rank and file constituents after your victory, Sir. Too many of us have used our wits only for a short-term purpose because of the daily basic need is more powerful dictating us in making our decision. Please remember that a large number of us have chosen you based not only on the huge expectation for something better but also on being unknowledgeable situation or because we have been in the even greater bitterness of life.
If you take your victory as the result of your right choice of political consultants and advisors you should remind yourself that both the amount of money and the seats you promise them are actually making the life of people still the same or even worse. Be careful please, our president, there are cunning foxes everywhere in the world, and there are very likely some surrounding you while you unconsciously do not realize them.
We are also actually questioning the free schooling you promise on TV screen everyday, Sir. We know that the commercial is not for free. Millions or even billions is the cost certainly. Where is the money from? Is it from the required 20 percent national budget for education? If it is, why did you allow the educational ministry spent the huge amount of money for that widely known unnecessary commercial? Why did not you ask him to wisely build more schools or to train the teachers to be better educators with that money? And why has the commercial been started since the early time of the national election, Sir?
We do hope you are really as willing as a humble man when you thank the peasants for their crops. We ask you herewith to care with the victims of the consecutive transportation accidents and not only care with the supports from the allegedly actors behind the tragedies.
There are too many hopes, Sir. But we do believe you understand all of them if you are really close to all of us. That’s why we plead you for doing something and not remaining still and quiet. We have seen enough of your charming and elegant style to attract our attention because it eventually does not change anything.
Perhaps many of us are still bewitched, but please complete your enchantment with real works or someday we may betray you. We need a working leader who is able to make a decision regardless how critical the situation is immediately. If you are still doubtful in deciding something because you have to consider the shares of the people surrounding you let us work hand in hand to struggle for the rights of the people only and leave them alone with their dirty businesses.
We are on your side, Sir, if you listen to what we wish. Not much. Each of us only need likely a millionth of your expensive living cost plus a peaceful atmosphere to our own faith and cultures. Thank you for reading this, Sir.

The writer is a teacher.