On a Jump Start and Our Own Gory Agora

If you look at my previous post, it was done almost a year ago. Yes, I have been lazy in writing - not because I don't have anything to say, oh no. Miss Lai Lai never shut up. I was just lazy putting my thoughts into coherent and structured statements for the audience. So instead, I updated my facebook status, and I was addicted to Twitter for the last month or so (yes, again, I am a late bloomer. Sue me).

So, a good friend of mine, Miss Sassy, sent me an email this morning - a mere 15hours or so after our regular meet-up session and put up this proposition: to write an article as a guest blogger for my almost defunct blog. How sweet of her.

Now, Miss Sassy is a contributer for one of Indonesia's English newspapers. Her witty-yet-sharp-opinionated articles get published from time to time. Unfortunately, one particular article apparently did not quite make the cut - and I am betting my best dollar because it was too...blunt, to put it mildly.

So, if that newspaper won't have it, I'll gladly and humbly publish her article as a jump start to my blog for this year. It may touch on some people's nerves - but I think she intended it that way.

Now, this is my blog. I'm the writer, publisher and editor, and for this one, no editing is required. So, here it is in its entirety - I present to you, Miss Sassy.

Enjoy!

and PS. I promise to be not so lazy again. At least for another year. ;P

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THE GORY UNRAVELING OF OUR OWN AGORA

Two weekends ago I watched Agora, featuring great actress Rachel Weisz as the renowned philosopher and astronomer Hypatia from the fourth century, during which lingering paganism, rising Christianity, and struggling Judaism made the tumultuous melting pot that was the then Roman-governed Alexandria province where she ran a much-acclaimed science academy.

I’m not here for movie promotion. I want to tell you that after the thought-provoking film delivered its poignant final scene in a gory twist, my friends and I, of different ethnic and religions, muttered our common fear—that our beloved Indonesia might just end up that way.

Ignore the small details and focus on main storyline. The chilling picture will hit very close to home.

Overzealous, self-professed God’s soldiers ransacking properties and attacking others, claiming their thuggish actions as worship and defense of their noblest, most-righteous God? Then, parabalani. Now, FPI.

Law and order officers standing idly as the aforementioned thugs repeatedly running amok for no valid reasons? Then, the red-cloaked Roman soldiers. Now, our brown-uniformed National Police.

As for the ruling Prefect playing populist, validating certain beliefs while outlawing others, isn’t that what our many regional bylaws and the outdated Blasphemy Law basically are?

Three days later, I was still busy texting friends to catch the movie when another saga unfolding its latest, twisting episode. And gasp, it was Agora all over again.

An assembly of various vested interests, so purposefully persistent it has swayed from dubiously diligent to vengefully vindictive faster than Paris Hilton changing men? A leader stalling time, perhaps trying to let conflicts running its course, yet gets ran over instead by the mob and his supposed council? An astute thinker and ballsy trailblazer armed by plain logic so strong she scares the living daylights out of her shoddy detractors they had to devise schemes to get her out?

Check. Check. Check.

I’ve grown to detest the way things heading on this once promising land. Democracy has gone demo-crazy these days, where 32-year oppressed silence has been turning into crazy make-up-for-lost-time decade (hint: perfect time to blame Suharto again!). Fueled further by 24/7 news cycle and the misconception of free speech, it’s spiraling down to an orgy of screaming the loudest, hogging the longest airtime, and using any means to win most supporters.

For example, why the “Allahu Akbar” shouts heard during live Century voting? Or, Bogor mayor’s insistence to banish slaughterhouses that had existed for decades and provided for Bogor’s pork-eating, equal-right residents? Or, a certain Sumatran province that required female civil servants dressed in Muslim attire regardless of their personal beliefs and the plural residents they serve? Sounds to me like misleading ill-informed Muslim citizens to think it’s a religious call of duty, and as a born-with, practicing Muslim, I think it’s unfair and insulting the intelligence of other Muslims. In fact, many sensible Muslim Indonesians have privately criticized the bigoted practices, although most of them kept mum in public for fear of being labeled as ‘un-pious’ in this piety-valued nation.

Just as many sensible Indonesians had long suspected that Century investigation was basically an elaborate scheme to weaken the ruling government and oust its certain shining stars along the way, regardless whether they chose to speak out. I personally started sharing the opinion after Pansus hearings with VP Boediono, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati and some other witnesses, when lambskin gloves and guises were off and the wolf pack eventually showed their true color.

I’m calling my fellow Indonesians who are blessed with bright mind, sensibility, ability for objective thinking, resources to support thinking process, and channels to voice opinions out. We need to stop acting like a silent floating mass, or middle class, or whatever the correct term is. I know there are millions of us who want a modern, world-playing Indonesia to finally emerge and steadily move forward and we’ve inundated the Web with our inspiring chats, blogs, tweets, or Facebook groups.

But Indonesia is much bigger and complex than the virtual world—it’s the world’s fourth most populous country that for each wired-up, highly-educated metropolitanian, there are hundreds of countryside citizens without advanced education and free information access. They make the bulk, guys, and they’re one of us. And if we don’t reach out and start walking together and talking as equal compatriots, then they’re up for grabs for those self-absorbed politicians dispensing hours of blah-blahdy-blah TV talks, or religion-masked terrorists investing years of living among them, sowing trust, and gradually teaching poisonous, hate-based belief.

Venture out of the usual Bali or Yogya on your next holiday. There are literally thousand places to see and millions Indonesians to meet, who need your interactions on many different levels as much as you need to branch out and learn about their world. Speak up a balancing opinion the next time an overzealous friend, relative, neighbor, or colleague starts spreading divisive, judgmental, hate-sowing words.

Stand up to injustice and unfairness (by FPI and alike) even when it’s not directly aimed at you. For all bright-minded, forward-thinking and honest souls who want to serve in public sector or take the political plunge, I promise to be more supportive—better we to populate the seats than those self-serving, wicked old guards and their fresh batch of younger clones. Let’s put forward dozens of Sri Mulyani Indrawatis for the one they have roughhoused.

So please, for every resource allocated to acquire the latest best-selling book, Panerai watch or Vuitton bag, or to mundanely upload party pics on that precious Blackberry, double up to live outside your tinted sunglasses and cars. Speak up, act out, grab a new hand outside your comfort zone, and march forward together. Let’s reclaim our vibrant, pluralistic, rich motherland.

And let’s do it now, before the tide is irreversible, as pictured in some of Agora’s particularly blood-curdling scenes, which soon unravel to blood-spilling acts I should add. Like when mob leaders privately and publicly ordered legitimate leader to kneel in submission, as both physical and symbolic act to relinquish ruling power. Or when outnumbered academicians stood in fear on the rooftop, watching uncounted mob eerily circling and pelting stones at the library building, literally the last bastion of knowledge, and asked in disbelief, “Since when they have become so many?”

-Lynda Ibrahim-
Jakarta, 7 May 2010

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