Much comedic ado about nothing: FPI and the piggybanks - by Lynda Ibrahim

Hi, this interesting-as-usual piece by Lynda got into my inbox in the first weekend of the month. But I was off and so couldn't post it right away. My apologies to Lynda. But you readers can surely see, this juicy piece is worth the wait. Enjoy! -- Kate

MUCH COMEDIC ADO ABOUT NOTHING: FPI AND PIGGYBANKS -Lynda Ibrahim

I commenced the week rather ominously, broke a tooth while lunching on entirely harmless spaghetti. Gushing blood as scrambling to my car, I hit fence in swerving mad dash to the dentist. Dented tooth and dented car, a classic episode in accident-prone life dating back to my baby steps-- my parents barely bat an eye when their klutzy child arrived at their house for much-needed supply of TLC and soft foods. Just as well, since the week soon turned into a grander, free-for-all comedy, it got my mind off the painful root canal.

First, FPI, who has ran amok freely for many years, smashing people and properties left and right, tearing through Indonesia’s collective fabric of tolerance, while shamelessly borrowing God’s name for textbook thuggery, is finally facing its strongest opposition yet as legislators and activists are calling for its much-deserved demise. A legislator even publicly let out a suspicion, long-held public rumor I may note, of FPI’s all-powerful backing.

Heck! If it were up to gazillions concerned citizens like me, FPI would’ve been disbanded many moons ago, least of after they beastly attacked the pluralistic alliance peacefully rallying at Monas for minority Ahmadiyah sect on a sunny Sunday in 2008. Many were furious upon learning that, after largely went unpunished for ransacking bars and McDonald’s, baton-wielding FPI members were now chasing unarmed civilians including wheelchair-bound Mrs. Abdurrahman Wahid. Yet, few voiced their objections loudly. Perhaps fearing to be called heretics if seen standing against so-called defenders of religion in this piety-valued nation, or fearing FPI would come after them Mafia-style.

Thus, vigilante FPI thrived on. Halting church constructions? Dispersing group prayers and private in-house baptism? Generally getting offended at anyone or anything they mistakenly deemed as enemies of Islam? Majority floating mass remained silent.

Yet tide might turn as lately FPI started protesting against the traditional West Javanese attired Three Ladies statue in Bekasi, claiming a display of Christian trinity proselytizing tool, then barged in on public discussion attended by few legislators in a common restaurant, throwing outdated accusation of communism. While delivered menacingly the two shenanigans were stupendously ludicrous on so many levels that they were reduced to slapstick jokes that we could just openly laugh out loud at.

Either my eyes deteriorating or their delusion peaking, since after squinting for hours at variously-angled pictures of the statue, I still couldn’t see, for the life of me, any trace of Christian trinity. And it got more hilarious as the befuddled Balinese sculptor, called for comment, earnestly inquired what exactly a Christian trinity was. I’m waiting for FPI, any minute now, to swiftly calling the statue a projection of Hindu Trisula.

And as for the communism allegation, no doubt loosely based by one of the legislator’s father’s PKI past, were FPI sleeping through the ‘90s and missed the colossal crumbling of communism? Dude, if you gotta openly accuse someone, at least do it with flair and pick something sexy!

Then, another kind of hilarity unraveled, when the weekly Tempo published a controversial report on, as they titled it, fat bank accounts of high-ranking policemen.

While I won’t comment on the report’s content, I found hysterical this quaint notion that, upon publications of a considerably scandalous piece, a disturbed party would still bother to locate newspaper agents at such ungodly hour, while others were cheering on World Cup or devouring post-clubbing lamb fried rice, to shell out presumably hard-earned hard cash in a spectacularly futile attempt to evaporate the offending issue, considering that not only it’d fuel rumor mill further, the report could easily be accessed online in this digital age anyway. Moreover, some copyrights-ignorant schmucks would quickly make photocopies and retail them at every street corner, as they evidently did within hours after the magazine magically disappeared.

The cake on this klutzy comedy week, however, is won by the flaring verbal joust as National Police, exercising their rights notwithstanding, amid their 64^th anniversary nonetheless, decided to sue Tempo, and here goes the kicker, for the cover illustration. Of all the flame generated by the 9-page reportage! For those who haven’t seen it, see attached the fussed-about cover of a man resembling uniformed police walking off three plump, perky, pink piggybanks on a leash. The spat in summary:

Police: Those pigs are an insult!
Tempo: They only depict piggybanks, really.
Police: But in this country, the ceramic vaults for kids to save pennies (celengan) are shaped like chicken, so the pigs are baseless and hence insulting!
Tempo: Well, if you want to go down that road, celengan is derived from the word celeng (slang for ‘pig’), anyway.
Writers: So, do we start translating celengan to chickenbank from now on? Or should someone consult the chickens first?

Happy anniversary to police corps! Along with sincere thanks for some hardwork that’s been delivered, I humbly remind here that trust must ultimately be earned. Corruption fight needs clearly measured results beyond agreeable magazine covers or disgruntled general singing like canary to media. And the longer you stand idly, the more thugs seizing control and robbing you off public trust. Please watch Alejandro Amenabar’s epic Agora-- see how the FPI-like parabalani eventually managed to publicly humiliated a lawful ruler by ordering him to physically kneel in submission. Not so funny anymore at that point eh, generals?

To the silent Indonesian mass, now that we’ve all had a good laugh, wake up! Indonesia is progressing, with long homework list. There are more pressing issues like crumbling school buildings, depleting ozone, hospitals for remote islands, teenage drugs, or city mass transportation. This busy, bustling democracy has no room for petty pimples like FPI.

To me a practicing Muslim, FPI was never defenders of Islam, and neither should you be manipulated nor keep your silence anymore! Islam’s image actually needs defense from their cheaply employing Islamic wardrobe and sacred terms, like Allahu Akbar, whenever they swing arms to hurt others. Seriously, watch Agora and see outnumbered academicians stood in Serapeum library, literally the last bastion of knowledge, as uncounted mob circling closely and pelting stones, then asked in eerie disbelief, “Since when they’ve become so many?”

They have become so many since we let them, filthy thugs in any coat, to exist for so long. It’s bloodier than a root canal, and that’s no comedy at all.

Jakarta, 4 July 2010

The Day I Morosely Picked a Side (by Lynda Ibrahim)

Dear all,
We are sad that the country's top reformist is finally leaving us. Sri Mulyani Indrawati is our role model, as we believe she is to many of you, friends. While wishing her success in her new endeavor in Washington DC (Rizal, Ujang, please take care of Mbak there, will you?), Cafe Salemba would pay tribute to her. Today, Lynda Ibrahim share hers with us. Kate



THE DAY I MOROSELY PICKED A SIDE

-Lynda Ibrahim-

One rainy afternoon in November 2008, I attended a birthday soiree in a South Jakarta’s novelty patisserie-cum-café. The US credit crunch was fast snowballing into a global financial crisis, and everyone was bracing for the worst.

On domestic front, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati was persistently defying all kinds of pressure to bail out Bakrie-owned mining company Bumi who got itself into a mess by, in laymen’s term, having borrowed more than its assets could ever pay back for. She rightfully stood her ground, declaring that her main job was to manage or safeguard the country’s assets and created policies for market player, not to rush rescuing the assets of market players who got into trouble. Or as I unreservedly added—a player who got into trouble due to their own imprudent corporate practices and complete disregard of Corporate Finance 101, duh.

There were three male guests in the soiree that I found myself debating with amid lattes and piecrusts. A man who might know more than he could say, a man who wanted to know more than what he said, and a man who wanted to be known for knowing everything and everyone. Despite the psychodynamic sidebar, they shared an opinion that, after crusading against corruption and publicly taking an opposite stance from the Bakrie the Behemoth over Bumi, in addition to having previously refused to open the state’s coffers to compensate for Bakrie-owned Lapindo Brantas’ mudflow victims, Mulyani had garnered enough enemies that her Cabinet days were numbered.

Fueled by linear logic, trust of human intelligence, conviction of greater good, and perhaps too much caffeine, I ardently argued that our dear President certainly understood that not only his Finance Minister stood her ground for some valid, nation-serving, reasons, she was also a highly valuable asset on his Cabinet who was valiantly trying to reform deep-corrupted institutions under her ministry. An uphill battle that was long overdue, until she stepped up and shook down both Custom-Excise Office and Tax Office, Indonesia’s most notorious devil’s lairs of corruption. The boys called me over-optimistic, and I called them status-quo suckers.

SBY got reelected on a landslide about a year later. Indonesia was relatively shielded from the global crisis’ worst nightmares thanks to Mulyani’s rock-solid acumen and policies. Seemingly oblivious to the plentiful of accolades, Mulyani went tending to her business, riding the reform wagon further up and around. I thought about those three doomsayers from the birthday soiree and was seriously tempted to call and sing ‘nyah, nyah, nyah’—but resisted and danced to Mamma Mia tunes by my living room instead.

What a difference six months make! Last Wednesday, still limping from a podiatric procedure, I almost tripped when news broke that Mulyani stepped down to work as World Bank’s Managing Director. For two days it was all hazy for me, and it wasn’t the work of the painkiller prescribed for my left sole, but because I just couldn’t settle with the issue. I refused to believe that, after showing unwavering focus and unflagging spirit in carrying duties, even during months-long Centurygate that soon reshaped into a personal vendetta against her, she just went off to accept some job to enjoy a greener pasture, to spite the seemingly thankless stakeholders, or as insultingly suggested by some political potheads, to flee the country avoiding legal battle. Probably the same potheads who said that the prayer beads she was seen clutching under desk during Pansus hearing as a sign of fear—whereas I saw it plainly as a pacifier in dealing with loaded questions and hostile attitude served before her for 12 straight hours. Heck, there were some blatantly nasty moments then that, had I been her, and clearly this is why she’s the Minister and I’m not, I probably would’ve leapt off the desk in an ass-kicking, take-no-prisoner, Jennifer Garner’s Alias way.

The weekend prior to Mulyani’s resignation I just had watched Alejandro Amenabar’s latest epic, Agora, which starred Rachel Weisz as Hypatia, the fourth century’s renowned philosopher and astronomer who taught in a much-acclaimed science academy under the dome of the legendary Alexandrian library. As a remote Roman province, Alexandria was a melting pot that wasn’t spared from the embroiling conflict among the old guard of pagan belief-- mostly Roman-educated and Greek-influenced scholars such as Hypatia--, the fast-growing Christians coming off centuries of oppression and now armed with their FPI-like parabalani, and the struggling Jewish population.

Religion or realpolitik, Agora’s blood-curdling scenes that were eventually followed by blood-spilling kind showed that once a leader standing idly as a limited group’s vested interest was schemed as public issue and maneuvered onto public stage, bolts would unscrew sooner than Paris Hilton undress, and by then it would be too late to enforce any legitimate law and order unless, or even in spite of, a sacrificial lamb being served up the platter to appease the berserk beasts. Ancient Alexandria and modern Indonesia have so much in common I still have chills down my spine 10 days after I watched the movie.

This past week there have been so many rumor swirling around, ranging from the ‘hush-hush’ to the ‘you spill, we kill’ variety. Maybe this was the graceful exit for her, or the most amicable solution for many. Maybe she is being ‘safe-kept’ until sensibility returns. Maybe she retreats to regroup, so she can return for a bigger ticket in 2014. Everything and anything is possible at this point— but to me one thing is crystal clear. I grew up dancing and I can spot choreography, however subtle, when I see one. And this was one.

I started out objective when the whole Centurygate unfolded. I admittedly got disturbed by the Salem witch trial style that some Pansus members were demonstrating during the hearing week that I made my thoughts public, yet I still strived to remain fair. But somewhere along the way gloves have been off, claws are out. And although I didn’t draw the first blood, on the morose Wednesday May the 5th, I got to pick a side.

And as I understood, so did many previously non-committal, middle-ground mass.

Hence, for those of you dancing victory laps screaming ‘rah-rah’ around the bonfire, just thought you guys might want to know.

Jakarta, 10 May 2010