Democracy isn’t a Magical Elixir.

Sometimes I get caught up in the promise of democracy, believing that it would be the best imperfect solution to everything: graft, economic disparity and the common cold. My state is currently holding its election. And there are countless violations involved in the process you can hardly keep up with the news and soon enough they get swallowed in the waves. At this point, anyone who has made a voting decision either have a finely honed filter for the media and/or basing it solely on faith, blind or otherwise.

Then you read the other parts of the paper: a coal mine collapses, a boy in Irian Jaya is shot by TNI, National Examination results are botched for several schools and an entire town fails to pass the National Examination altogether, BLBI cases are still unresolved almost 12 years on and people are robbing bolts off the new Suramadu bridge.

For all the plans for development, there’s always going to be someone taking the fucking bolts of your infrastructures and harnessing steel from railways to be sold at the market. Is it the fault of the state that these accidents happen? You can say that they’ve resorted to sabotage our development because our system fails to give their basic needs. Yet, these gates were opened to connect these islands together for employment and the opportunity to achieve those basic needs. Then you say it’s because they don’t have the mental capacity or lacks the moral education to find better alternative means. Wait, hold on a sec. I think my brain just short circuited there. There will always be an infinite amount of excuses.

Reforms in education is needed! Judicial systems has to be reformed! Government bodies need better human capital! But these institutions are build for rigidities to become cosy self-serving receptacles for egos and seniority. Fuck you and your disdain for foreign influences when your speech is littered with English terms and your wife has an LV bag tucked somewhere in her wardrobe. Fuck you and your ramblings that capitalism have failed our country when it is the very system that got you there on that podium, standing on the means of production which you may have earned or squandered.

Is this all worth it? Is this really worth fighting for? A better system and a better country isn’t a utopian idea but surely there’s a better route.

I shouldn’t be this young and jaded.