The Tale of Bekasi’s Lolita Teaches All the Wrong Lessons About Abuses of Power

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The Tale of Bekasi’s Lolita Teaches All the Wrong Lessons About Abuses of Power
Yohanes Sulaiman | April 27, 2012

'This incident shows fighting the system is like trying to change the direction of the wind.'

If people are wondering why many officials act like petty tyrants, they need to look no further than recent scandals in Indonesia’s education system.

The media has been putting a spotlight on inappropriate materials found in a school textbook, but even more disturbingly, it was revealed last week that a school principal in Bekasi had expelled a student in the middle of her national final examination, preventing her from graduating and jeopardizing her future.

The reasons for her expulsion should give everyone pause for thought (and producers of movies and soap operas some golden material). The principal said the student was a home-wrecker who had seduced him and that, once rebuffed, she had bad-mouthed him through social media. The student, however, claimed that the principal had been wooing her with favorable treatment and gifts such as cellphones, causing her classmates to resent her.

Of course, the fact that this 17-year-old girl from Sukabumi, West Java, was a star student at the school served as icing on the cake. Some had been questioning whether she was truly a good student or whether she had received her high grades inappropriately.

At one point she took to social media to vent, using discourteous words to express her frustration at being treated contemptuously by her classmates. When the principal saw this, he felt slighted and was outraged.

Once she had been expelled, local journalists and the Department of Education learned that she is an orphan, creating so much public outrage and pressure that she was allowed to sit her examination elsewhere.

Regardless of who is in fault, whether the principal is a lecherous old man or the girl is a young seducer, this case should raise many red flags about the pair’s relationship and the abuse of power. In fact, if this had happened in the United States, I think many heads would have rolled. But not here.

Even without the inappropriate mock-adultery story, which elementary students read and which has led to public outrage, it seems likely that students at this Bekasi school will take away many bad lessons from the incident.

First, they will learn that people in power can do anything they like. The fact is that holding a high position allowed the principal to expel the student without any due process, without giving her a chance to defend herself and without any input from other educators. She was simply informed at the end of the first examination day that she had been expelled.

While one could argue that her statement on social media was grave enough to warrant expulsion, she should still be entitled to a just and fair hearing, which would have allowed her to defend herself. But nobody at the school or the Education and Culture Ministry seemed to care that she had been denied her right to just and fair treatment, not to mention her right to an education, or that her future had been jeopardized.

The second lesson is that holding a high position gives people freedom from criticism. It is mind-boggling that this incident even happened in the first place. Apparently no adult on the school grounds considered this relationship between a married man and an underage girl to be inappropriate. And everyone seemed to know that something was going on, because the relationship, which created so many conflicts of interests at the school, had become quite a hot topic among the girl’s peers.

It is possible to make two conjectures from this case of the “dog that does not bark.” Either the teachers were so grossly incompetent that none of them realized what was going on or, even worse, were not bothered at all by the relationship, or a code of silence gave them an incentive to keep quiet for fear of jeopardizing their careers.

The third takeaway is that life will go on, at least for the person in power. Nothing bad seemed to happen to the principal’s career, though it is unknown whether his marriage has been adversely affected. The student, on the other hand, was traumatized, forced to take her national examination elsewhere and deprived of any recourse against the school’s arbitrary decision.

At the end of the day, this incident has shown students at the school that fighting the system is like trying to change the direction of the wind: You will lose. Thus the moral of the story is to simply obey your superiors, doing whatever they want to ensure that things don’t get hairy. Then, when students graduate and their turn for power comes, they can do whatever they like while they’re on top of the food chain.

The problem with Indonesian education, or rather with some officials within the educational bureaucracy, is a lack of focus on students’ needs and a tendency to prioritize outward appearances.

Consider the case of one education official in East Java who had a foot-in-mouth moment when he callously suggested that pregnant students should not be allowed to take the national examination. His statement caused such an outrage that he was forced to qualify it, explaining that he was expressing his personal opinion and not an order.

Like the principal in Bekasi, this official apparently never thought twice or felt a pang of guilt at the prospect of ruining the future of some students or, in the worst case scenario of a student being pregnant because she has been raped, of victimizing someone for a second time.

With such a callous view to the future of students, it is no wonder that youths often fail to absorb their academic lessons and instead learn other lessons about how to abuse power and act thoughtlessly as an official, and about how evaluations and grades may ultimately depend on the subjective opinions and whims of bureaucrats.

These lessons are much worse than the inappropriate materials found in a textbook. It’s no wonder that some people end up as petty tyrants.
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devine

8:04pm Apr 27, 2012

Thanks Bpk Sulaiman for spelling it out...

Sceptic

10:52pm Apr 27, 2012

Sulaiman for President!!!!!!

jchay

11:17pm Apr 27, 2012

Same with the well known OKB (orang kaya baru) syndrom, many with power also have similar syndrom called OPB (orang penguasa baru).. No wonder it is so "kampung".