So Long, Gus Dur

Like many of my peers, I first learn about Gus Dur from his writings in Tempo and then from writings about him in the same magazine (where else?). It was in the mid 80s – I was in high school- that I realized that Gus Dur was not “just” a columnist but also a leader of the largest Islamic organization in Indonesia, the NU. There were a number of articles in Tempo at that time that dwelled on NU’s decision to adopt Pancasila as the azas tunggal and to return to their 1926 khittah, and what those would mean for the coming election.

For someone like me, who spent most of my childhood in Jakarta, who had no deep roots in either NU or Muhammadiyah, and at that time was attending a catholic high school¹, it pained me a lot to have to learn about the word "khittah" just to get through an edition of Tempo. But I remember buried in the dull and tedious discussions about party politics and NU internal politics, was Gus Dur’s argument about Islam being compatible with pluralism.² Being in confined comfort of a school where religious and racial tensions were non-existent, I thought his argument was compelling if not relevant.

During my college years when, to my shock, I found college to be much more heterogenous than high school (duh!) Gus Dur’s views suddenly became more relevant to me. Dynamics between majority and minority as well as racial and ethnic differences became more apparent in college. I started to consciously seek what he and other “public intellectuals” had to say about the issue. When tensions between racial or religious groups became highly charged, I learned that Gus Dur often was the figure who helped resolve these tensions. During these years there were very high profile cases such as where he defended the right of Arswendo for free speech in the Monitor case, very much a lonely figure. But it was the little skirmishes, the low profile battles that he fought, that impressed me more. Our campus in Salemba was very close to LBH Jakarta where Gus Dur sometimes came to give a talk. I remember attending a talk he was giving there on the marriage rights of a couple who were Confucians. Their marriage had been presented before a court because of legal and administrative issue and Gus Dur was an expert witness of some sorts, in favor of the couple. I never knew who the couple were but during the talk Gus Dur was defending their case like they were his own relatives. There were many low profile events similar to that, and I tried to attend some that didn’t require much effort on my part. It helped a lot that Gus Dur had such an acute sense of humor, and one did not need to be a student activist steeped in rethorics to be able to digest and enjoy his talks. I was never an activist and never saw myself as one anyway, so I only read from the printed press the more vocal (and more political) views that he made as the chairman of Forum Demokrasi. Our Salemba campus was also close enough to STF Driyarkara where Gus Dur was often invited for discussions - and almost always came late. It was always worth skipping a few neoliberal (ha!) economic classes for those events.

Then 1998 happened. During the tumultuous years, I was away. Like many others, I was somewhat surprised by the turns of events that resulted in Gus Dur being elected the president. But I remember being very proud to have a man of such conviction becoming the leader of our nation.

As I read through his obituaries in recent days, while trying to recollect what I learned from the man, it strikes me how often people use the word “erratic” (=highly inconsistent), to describe his short presidency and even his personality. This is perhaps the biggest irony, since of all the public figures who were his contemporaries, no one is as consistent in sticking to his principles on humanity, pluralism and democracy as Gus Dur.

Thank you, Gus Dur, and so long.


¹ Like many of my peers in high school, I was interested in the 1987 election primarily because election campaigns were fun (Truck convoys! Free t-shirts! Free concerts!). Incidentally, most students in my school were PDI fans, at least outwardly. Gugun Gondrong was the only student coming to school donning a non-PDI attributes (he wore green PPP headband while riding his motorbike across the schoolyard, but that is another story).
² I’ll leave it for historians to debate how much of Gus Dur’s NU maneuvers were driven by political pragmatism, appeasement, or NU internal politics.
³ As a student studying economics in Salemba, I was perhaps already predisposed against IPTN and everything that had to do with it (funny how an undergraduate thinks). It was not surprising that when ForDem was formed partly as a reaction to the establishment of ICMI, my preference was clear.

RIP: Gus Dur

We were deeply saddened to hear KH Abdurrahman ‘Gus Dur’ Wahid has passed away.

Gus Dur became the fourth president of Indonesia in 1999. At that time, I was in Canberra, Aco in Champaign, Ujang in East Lansing, Sjamsu on the way to Washington, DC from Ithaca, and Rizal in Kukusan Beji, Depok. It was a funny process. There was yet to be a direct presidential election. The president was elected by the MPR which consists of 500 elected DPR members, and another 195 non-elected members.

Megawati’s PDIP was the winner of the election. That made her the strongest candidate to become the president. But there was a strong resentment against having a female president, mainly from the Islamic parties. Some last minute maneuvers inside the MPR, known as ‘Poros Tengah’ initiated by Amien Rais (then MPR Chairman) broke the deadlock by installing Gus Dur as the president and gave Megawati the VP chair.

Gus Dur was a great pluralist, humanist, pro-democratic, moderate Muslim leader. Unfortunately, he was not a good president. Worse, he was an erratic president. Of course, he had great agenda. Some of which he could achieve – like bringing down the discriminative barriers against ethnic Chinese, pushing forward pluralism ideas, eliminating SIUPP and removing 'culture' from the Ministry of Education and Culture. But his erratic style made it hard for almost everyone to understand what he was doing, let alone to execute his other agendas. Soon the supports for him waned.

His most famous catchphrase was “Gitu aja kok repot?” In some ways, this proved to be an optimal strategy to deal with criticisms and dirty politicking. The problem was he used this strategy too much, even for things that needed his serious attention. Our senior colleague Hadi Soesastro once told a story when he, Prof. Emil Salim and some other senior economists gave an economic briefing, Gus Dur literally fell asleep. After someone woke him up, he just said, “Right, you take care of the economy…”

His presidency reached the anticlimax in July 2001 when the same MPR which elected him less than two years earlier agreed to impeach him following the infamous ‘Buloggate’ and ‘Bruneigate’ scandals. The same MPR which rejected Megawati then elected her to be the fifth president.

Nevertheless, no one can disagree that he was a great person. One of the best Indonesians we’ve ever had. And we will surely miss him. So long, Gus… Have a nice rest, now you no longer have to be repot…

On the octopus book

Re all this brouhaha on a new book by George Aditjondro, regular visitors might already know my take. Yes, I'm against any book banning -- regardless of the type and the quality of the book.

I'm not a big fan of Aditjondro. Far from that. So I have no interest in finding or reading his book. But if the center of criticism ie The President feels disturbed by that book, ban is not an option. It's good that SBY has expressed his will not to do that.

How to Read Newspaper Without Feeling Sorry

Let us read two examples on how journalist writes a column on bailout issues.

One is Andi Suruji's Kolom Politik-Ekonomi, Sistemik...!, Kompas, 12/26/09. The other is David Leonhardt's Economic Scene, Perhaps, It's Time to Play Offense, NYT, 9/16/08

If I gave Leonhardt's piece an A, what should I grade Suruji's?

Books banned, again

Five books are officialy banned by Attorney General Office (Kompas, 26/12). They are: "Pembunuhan Massal Gerakan 30 September dan Kudeta Soeharto", "Suara Gereja bagi Umat Penderitaan Tetesan Darah dan Cucuran Air Mata Umat Tuhan di Papua Barat Harus Diakhiri", "Lekra Tak Membakar Buku Suara Lenyap Lembar Kebudayaan Harian Rakyat 1950-1965", (until this, I thought the ban was because these books had painfully long and tasteless titles -- of course I was wrong) "Enam Jalan Menuju Tuhan", and "Mengungkap Misteri Keragaman Agama".

Book ban? Again? What an insult to humanity.

Defending infotainment

While we defend Luna Maya's right to express her anger towards some infotainment crews, we should make it clear that we likewise defend infotainment's rights to exist.

We therefore disapprove recent call (notably by some clerics) for banning infotainment. If you don't like such program, just turn off your TV or switch to other programs.

Merry Christmas!

To those celebrating it, Cafe Salemba wish you all a lovely Christmas!

Luna Maya

We hereby declare our full support for Luna Maya and against the infotainment journalists who sued her for expressing her ill feeling towards the latter, in her own twitter account.

Luna, from now on you can have coffee here for free as long as you like. Ariel can join, if he so likes.

Take-Home Final Exam Question

Suppose you have these finding from Reinhart and Rogoff (AER: 2009) showing that a banking crisis on average causes:

a. Unemployment to rise for 4.8 years, with an increase in the unemployment rate of about 7 percentage point.
b. Real GDP to decline for 1.9 years, with a decline in real GDP of about 9.3 percent.
c. Cumulative public debt to rise 186.3 percent in the three years following the crisis.

Questions:

a. What is the probability (P) you are willing to assign that not bailing-out Bank Century will not lead to a banking crisis?
b. Multiply P with either a, b, or, c finding above-mentioned. Do you still let Bank Century collapse? Of course you can put the cost of moral-hazard into your equation.

Instruction:

Submit your answer to those Indonesian lawmakers in that special committee before they get confused.

No Century for You (Yet)

Some of you may wonder why I don't serve something on Century brouhaha. It's for a simple reason: I do not have reliable data or information that can, to some extent, be verified. I follow the newspaper and some facebook debates, but the best I can have is something called investigative reports based on either BPK's audit report or BI's press release.

And crime investigation is not my thing.

But let me tell you my normative stance here. First, bank's bailout at time of crisis is theoretically defendable and systemic risk is not a snake-oil jargon. Second, any corruption related to the bailout should be investigated by authorized parties with credible tools and skills. As for political accountability joke process, just bring it on. I am always confident that ordinary citizens in general aren't that stupid.

Fair enough, yes?

Now, what Manohara has to do with Century? That's the question.