The Ballad of Mr Pantomime

My regular coffee shop stands at the end of a slippery stone alley, and the alley was bequeathed by our ancestors with one acoustic marvel: whatever is shouted at its mouth comes back from the far end ten times louder. The locals call it Echo Alley. The coffee is excellent, but chatting there takes courage, since even a whisper can return as a public announcement. The shop's wise owner has hung thick cloth on the back wall. The architect of the alley clearly never imagined what his creation would do to community life.

From this marvel the residents drew a law of nature taught from nursery school onwards: the loudest must be the most truthful. A child who shouts that he did not steal the biscuit is thought more honest than one who whispers a confession, even if crumbs are still clinging to the shouter's lips. Doctors no longer ask where it hurts, only how loudly the patient declares himself well. I stirred my sugar and reflected that the whole of this alley's learning rests on a single unit of measurement, the decibel.

Yet behind the shop, beyond a door padded with thick cloth, lies a hushed carpeted room with a long, dark-varnished table. There sits a Judge named Scales. He has no loudspeaker, no account and no followers, a condition which the people of Echo Alley regard as severe poverty. He has only one irritating habit: he always asks what the evidence is.

That afternoon the hushed room received a visitor whom I shall call Mr Pantomime, since acting is his trade. His clothes were immaculate, his voice deep, and he knew precisely when to draw a long breath so that onlookers would think him bearing the sorrow of the whole nation, when in fact he was holding back a sneeze. He was asked to raise his hand and swear, and he did so flawlessly: elbow bent, fingers together, eyes fixed on the ceiling as though seeking the blessing of the plaster. Then came a lovely tale, layered upon layer, complete with a twist in the middle and characters who happened to be unavailable for questioning. I peeped through the crack in the door, glass in hand, and thought that if courtrooms gave out prizes, that script would win best original story. Judge Scales took notes calmly with a thin smile. Nothing in a courtroom is more worrying than that smile, for it means he already holds the file.

Thinkers have long warned that an oath is not an opening line to be skipped like an advertisement. It is a pledge: a person stakes his honour so that his words may be believed, and part of that honour in truth belongs to the court and to everyone who still believes that testimony has a price. That is why the new Criminal Code, in force since 2 January 2026, deals with false statements under oath in Article 373 of Law No. 1 of 2023, replacing Article 242, which has now retired to enjoy its old age in the law library. The core remains the same: what is punished is deliberate falsehood, not honest forgetfulness. Unfortunately, as we know, Mr Pantomime never forgets his script.

On leaving the hushed room, Mr Pantomime faced a bitter fact: his acting talent was worth nothing in there. The judge was unmoved by wistful gazes into the distance or dramatic pauses of three seconds. So he walked to the mouth of the alley to call on the only institution that still treats falsehood as a product: the Applause Factory. It is staggeringly efficient. On the first floor, scriptwriters turn out one magic sentence in forty variations. On the second, thousands of residents whose faces are never seen, with profile pictures of cats, flowers and clenched fists, copy that sentence with the devotion of medieval scribes. On the third, an enormous machine converts the copies into the thing Echo Alley loves most: noise that looks like conviction. The fourth floor is the canteen, where truth is often overheard, since the staff love to gossip.

The staff are paid per shout, and they never ask what the script says, just as a postman does not read the love letters he delivers. They cry hoax at whatever the boss points to, slander at anyone carrying a file, and persecution even at the weather if the weather proves uncooperative. It is said that one employee once yelled at his own watch merely because it showed he was late. A famous thinker once distinguished the liar from the bluffer: the liar still respects the truth, for he knows what it is and hides it, whereas the bluffer does not care, since only the impression matters. The Applause Factory is a monument to the second kind, a place where truth is not an enemy but simply not invited. Logicians have a name for the fallacy that fuels this factory, the belief that something is true because many people believe it. Echo Alley's version is more refined: many believe it, as proved by the many who shout, and the shouters happen to be our own staff. Picture a restaurant declaring its cooking the finest because all its chefs agree.

Meanwhile, in another corner of the alley, a quarrel blazed over a single sheet of paper said to certify that someone had studied, been examined and passed. Nearly everyone had an opinion on that paper, and nearly all rested on visual inspection: the shade of the paper, the choice of typeface, the slant of the signature. Suddenly every resident became a document forensics expert, armed with a magnifying glass and a cousin who once worked at a print shop. Amid the clamour Mr Pantomime unfurled the sheet and cried that it was plainly written there. The crowd cheered, forgetting the simple distinction every teacher teaches: paper proves that something was once printed, not that its contents are true. To show a sheet of paper as proof of its own authenticity is like holding up a mirror to prove that the reflection is not lying.

An academic record is kept not on the paper but in the university archive, the graduation database, and the hands of an official with a stamp and the patience to use it. The way out is therefore single: official verification by the issuing institution, with no need for the neighbours' views, an opinion poll or a hashtag. If the document is genuine, the answer arrives in a matter of clicks, and the whole commotion disperses like mist in the sun. If not, the law has prepared a room with the door number already on it: Article 272 of the same Law threatens forgery of a degree certificate with up to six years' imprisonment or a category V fine. This is not a matter of vanity but of trust, for every honest graduate who ever sat up in the library on a fourth packet of instant noodles is entitled to believe in the system he went through. So the oddest part of the uproar is not whether the paper is genuine, but why those most certain of its authenticity seem busiest hiring loudspeakers rather than opening the archive door. A rightful owner seldom employs so many guards for the front garden, least of all ones who can shout in forty variations of a sentence.

Then came the day the Applause Factory reached peak production. Overnight, the hashtag defending Mr Pantomime climbed to the top of the loudest list in the whole alley. Thousands of copies of one sentence droned from end to end, bounced back, grew stronger and returned again, until the residents were convinced that a sound so big must be the voice of truth. Some even wept with emotion, including two scriptwriters who had forgotten the sentence was their own creation. Mr Pantomime then approached the hushed room with his chest thrust out, carrying a phone full of numbers: fifty thousand thumbs-up, two hundred thousand shares, a million views. He set it on Judge Scales's table like a trader unveiling his best wares, complete with a smile rehearsed in the mirror. The judge gazed at the screen for a long time. He was neither angry nor amused, though the corner of his mouth trembled slightly. He merely asked the cruellest question ever heard in any courtroom: where is the document, sir?

The phone chimed and the thumbs kept multiplying, yet in that thickly carpeted room there was no echo. Every shout from the alley stopped at the threshold like a flood meeting a dyke. In that place, numbers have no vote. Only evidence under the rules of procedure may speak, and there is no category for how many are angry, how viral it has gone, or whether Uncle so-and-so has shared it. Mr Pantomime grasped the paradox his factory had never taught him: noise can win an election over people's feelings, but it can never win a case against reality. Feelings can be coaxed, bought and herded, whereas reality does not care who is bidding.

From all this I sipped my coffee, which was growing cold, and drew a few conclusions. An oath is not a performance; it is the one moment when a person's words are given collateral, and so it cannot be withdrawn with the excuse that it was only strategy. If oaths may be worn like costumes, someone will soon swear in a clown suit. Nor is a crowd evidence, for a thousand accounts asserting one thing are no more convincing than a single document that can be checked, and when help must be bought to make a claim sound organic, the claim is admitting it lacks sincere defenders. Good food seldom needs a thousand people to call it good. As for paper, it is not truth but a door to truth whose key is held by the competent institutions. Whoever displays the door while padlocking the way in, then blames the guest for failing to enter, is performing a worn-out farce.

It is said that after these events the people of Echo Alley slowly learned a bitter lesson: however loud, an echo always dies at the far end of the alley. It carries nothing but itself. What remains once the noise subsides is an honest silence, in which Judge Scales still sits, still takes notes, and still asks questions in a voice that never rises by a single octave. Some residents stopped counting thumbs and began counting evidence. Others went on shouting, for shouting is a habit hard to break, rather like smoking but with vocal cords. The applause factories lost customers once people realised they had been paying dearly for something free all along, namely plain honesty. Two floors of the factory are now let out as a café, and its canteen remains the most honest of all.

As for Mr Pantomime, history does not record how his story ended. All that is recorded is that the cheapest way out of the whole mess comes down to two sentences: if it is true, show the proof, and if it is false, say sorry. And one more thing, no less important: send the troops home, for they have not yet had lunch. I finished my coffee and left the grounds at the bottom of the glass, for even grounds know they never lie about what remains. Every character in this coffee-shop tale is a pure invention, and the legal fate of anyone is decided by a court, not by the number of thumbs.

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The Insider Specialists, Part Three

Further Notes from a Coffee Shop: Direction, Destination, and a Thin Fence

That morning the retired gentleman arrived carrying a crumpled newspaper and a slightly crooked smile. He laid the newspaper on the table and pointed to a headline. I brewed my coffee more slowly than usual, because an admission of error is best accompanied by a bitter drink. The coffee we served yesterday had gone cold, and cold coffee ought to be brewed again, not served once more because the glass is still good.

This is what happened. On Wednesday, 4 November 2026, the Minister-State Secretary offered the view that the alleged wiretapping of the President might already fall into the category of acts leading towards treason, while admitting that the Palace did not yet know the purpose and was awaiting the results of the investigation. On the same day, the Coordinating Minister for Law, Human Rights, Immigration and Corrections stated that there were signs or indications pointing towards an act of treason under Articles 191 to 193 of the National Criminal Code, and that these indications were now being continuously examined by the investigators. The day before, he had still said that the provisions applied concerned wiretapping and the Electronic Information and Transactions Law. He also explained that the treason in question was not aimed at killing the President, but at incapacitating him so that he could not run the government.  

As for the penalty, Article 191 is no laughing matter. It states that treason committed with the intent to kill the President, to deprive him of his liberty, or to render him unable to run the government is punishable by death, life imprisonment, or imprisonment of up to twenty years. So, to those who ask whether the death penalty is among the possible penalties, the answer is yes: it is on the list. But note the word that links the three, namely or. The range runs from twenty years to the death penalty, and it is the judge who will later weigh where a person falls, if he is proved guilty, by looking at the evidence, the role played and the criminal intent. A maximum penalty is not a verdict, just as the menu is not the contents of the plate.

The busiest word in this case is not wiretapping but pointing, as in pointing towards. Everyone uses it and everyone seems pleased with it. But our retired gentleman, who once worked in a freight office, reminds us that a car pointing towards Jakarta has not necessarily arrived in Jakarta. Perhaps it has taken a wrong turn, perhaps it is going round in circles, perhaps it has stopped halfway, and perhaps it really is heading there and merely awaits proof that its destination is indeed Jakarta. For that reason we distinguish three things that are often mixed up like sandals at the door of a mosque. First, the official suspicion, namely wiretapping without proper procedure, deletion of electronic data and illegal access. Second, the indication, namely the direction currently being examined by the investigators. Third, the verdict, which does not yet exist and can only come from a court. While the process runs, the presumption of innocence applies to anyone with the status of a suspect.

In that conversation, the retired gentleman recalled an old event that people were again discussing. In September 2023, a president told his volunteers that he knew what lay inside the political parties and where they were heading, and that the information he received was complete. Our coffee shop, whose knowledge reaches no deeper than the bottom of a glass, was naturally impressed. A few days later the explanation arrived: these were routine reports from the intelligence agencies, the daily bread of any president, and entirely in keeping with the law. Defenders said that receiving intelligence reports is part of a head of state’s duties. Critics said that the task of intelligence is to analyse threats to the nation, not to peer into the parties’ plans. We nodded at both, for each had a sound point, and it is precisely between those two points that the fence runs thin. There is nothing wrong with holding reports, but reports that grow too keen on looking into other people’s kitchens easily become a habit, and a habit left unsupervised easily becomes a stock of provisions. This satire asks only one simple question: if information that complete belongs to the president alone, who ensures that it remains the property of the state and does not become the property of whoever happens to be in power? The question is not aimed at any individual, and it has nothing to do with the wiretapping case now under investigation, since no evidence connects the two. It is merely a reminder that every ruler, whoever he may be, needs the same fence.

So what should such a fence look like? We, the citizens of the coffee shop, hold no law degrees, but we know what a good fence looks like from the fences around our own houses. It has a clear gate, that is, rules on who may access what and for what purpose. It has a padlock, that is, permission and oversight from an institution that is not the keeper of the key. And it has a visitors’ book, that is, a record that can be examined afterwards by the competent authorities and by the courts. Without these three things, the keys to the house of state depend solely on the goodwill of whoever holds them. And goodwill, as we know from the history of Rome and Seoul alike, is the fastest-rotting building material there is.

As to who stands behind this case, the answer is still awaited. The Minister-State Secretary admits he does not know, the investigators have not revealed the motive, and the politicians keep asking in ever louder voices. When a former president was asked for his response to the case, he was reported to have replied that he respects the legal process. That is an attitude that deserves respect, and may it be held by all parties, from those close to the case to those far from it, from those in power to those awaiting their turn. In our coffee shop nobody dares point a finger, because the nose is an organ that easily loses its bearings unless accompanied by a case file.

As in the previous two parts, we leave one note in the margin of the dictionary. This satire is aimed at the culture of insiders: the habit of treating power as personal property, a network of friends as a state institution, and closeness as immunity. It is not aimed at the President, who needs our support so that this country can run on the right track, and it passes no verdict on anyone, because a coffee shop has only a spoon that clinks against the rim of a glass, not a judge’s gavel.

The coffee in my glass was down to its grounds when that conversation ended. May Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala always protect President Prabowo Subianto, keep him healthy and safe, and strengthen him to lead this country with justice and trustworthiness. May this case be handled openly, fairly and in accordance with the law, so that the guilty are punished in due measure, and the people can once again sip their coffee in peace. Amen.

Note: On 4 November 2026, the Indonesian Minister-State Secretary stated that the alleged wiretapping might lead towards treason, and the Coordinating Minister for Law, Human Rights, Immigration and Corrections stated that there were indications of treason under Articles 191 to 193 of the National Criminal Code, which the investigators are examining. Article 191 carries the death penalty, life imprisonment, or imprisonment of up to 20 years. The official suspicions against the suspects currently remain those of wiretapping, deletion of electronic data and illegal access. There is as yet no indictment or verdict, and the presumption of innocence continues to apply.

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