Left Luggage, No Ticket

On Saturday morning, the owner’s FM radio had moved on from mournful music to the news bulletins, and the empty seat among the republic’s chairs now had a timetable. On Wednesday 2 December, the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) will elect, swear in and ratify a successor in a single plenary session, as quickly as instant noodles. The letter asking the President for two names went out on Friday, after a closed joint meeting of about an hour; the doors were shut, but the water dispenser inside was surely left open. Reports differ on the deadline for submitting the names, some counting 18 November and others around 27 November, so I have put it on the plate marked unverified. The Assembly’s Speaker says the sixty-day limit falls on 10 January 2027, but nobody wants to use all of it, like a pupil given a week for homework who finishes it on the morning bus.

The retired schoolteacher repeated one line from the official video statement posted on Thursday: the office was only a temporary deposit. To the owner, who takes in helmets and bags for safekeeping every day, that made sense, apart from one thing: where is the ticket? The mandate is said to be handed back in full to the people, and the people, as the owners of the goods, receive it with no receipt, no attendant to check the contents are intact, and none of those clerks in hi-vis who usually say, careful, that mustn’t be thrown. In this warung a left-behind helmet is always checked for scratches before it is handed back; a country, surely, is worth more than a helmet.

The letter itself ran to only five paragraphs, according to the coordinating minister for law, and asks the Assembly to act under Article 8(2) of the 1945 Constitution. The Assembly’s Speaker and the minister both say no specific reason is written in it; according to the minister, what weighed on the decision were personal reasons and voices in society. Reasons that did not fit in five paragraphs apparently fit in a video of almost seven minutes: a personal decision, not about the diploma, educational documents complete and already submitted to the court, and no sign of incapacity. The claim that the documents are complete is the statement of the person concerned, and I cannot verify it independently. We are a nation adept at moving explanations from paper to screen, like bringing the washing in when clouds gather, and like washing, some explanations stay damp. A personal reason broadcast on two official channels remains personal, just as a diary posted online remains private.

The owner’s ledger records the sequence of events tidily. The day before, the former Vice-President said he was ready to fight and lay everything open at the administrative court. On that same Thursday, the Jakarta administrative court declared the suit over the equivalency certificate void because its subject had been revoked, ordered the claimant to pay Rp457,000 in court costs, and said no further appeal was possible; the judge said the ruling was meant to end a protracted controversy. His lawyers were reported to have considered an appeal, which I have not been able to confirm. We believe entirely that none of this is connected, for the warung teaches that two entries side by side are not always siblings, though they deserve to be set next to each other. A controversy of this size closed with a bill for Rp457,000; the cost to public trust has yet to be tallied by any cashier.

At the back table, the guessing game still turns like an old fan: five names, six names, seven names. The great political catchphrase, that no name has yet been agreed, means in warung language that there are plenty of names and the snacks are not finished. I would bet there was fried rice in that closed meeting, but a bet is not a fact. The Assembly’s Speaker reminds us that the Constitution says only that the President proposes two names, without saying where they come from, while according to the headline of one report, the coordinating minister for law says the candidates must come from coalition parties under the MD3 Law. I have yet to read the text and context of either; two people reading one text and finding two interpretations is common, like two cooks reading one recipe for soto. The verification and ad hoc teams are reported to total thirty-six members to examine two candidates: a reassuring ratio, provided this time the checking starts upstream with the documents rather than upstream with opinion. May the speed of a one-day plenary not rub off on the verification; instant coffee suits the morning, not the paperwork.

Some politicians and lawyers, according to reports, want the inquiry into the equivalency certificate to continue rather than stop because the political process is over. Whether any criminal proceedings are formally under way I cannot confirm, so I have put the request on a separate plate. I understand the demand: resigning closes a seat, not a question. Netizens, as usual, have already turned all this into memes with soap-opera soundtracks; we laugh, but not because we have forgotten. Laughter is how the people cope, and our memory outlasts any phone battery.

The way out is not grand. The Assembly and the President need only announce the criteria for candidates before the names, then publish a summary of the verification of both candidates’ documents before the plenary. The ministries and bodies concerned could publish a chronology of how the equivalency certificate came to be issued, so the chain of checks upstream is no longer full of holes. The parties proposing the candidates should also explain why a particular name was chosen, rather than saying merely that it came from consultation, and the media could mark guesses in a typeface plainly different from news. Whoever takes the seat, before being sworn in, we leave one simple request: give a ticket for every item the people leave in your keeping, and hand it back with a note, not merely a smile.

Waiting until 2 December reminds me of Father’s rule in our little kitchen. Coffee is made by the ears, not by restless hands. Listen to the water. Do not hurry. That was Father’s rule. Only later did I understand that what he taught was not how to brew coffee but how to live: to listen more than you speak, to be patient for longer than you complain, and to trust a process that human will cannot force. Of course that kind of patience does not mean keeping quiet: Father listened to the water to know when to pour, and we listen to the process to know when to ask. Waiting without a ticket is merely delay; waiting with a ticket is called brewing.

Towards noon, the owner gathered the grounds from the glasses and scattered them over the chilli plant by the door, noting the date on a biscuit tin: Wednesday, 2 December. The grounds at the bottom of my glass already knew the timetable by heart; this time they waited patiently, ticket and all.

That afternoon, once the grounds had been gathered, the owner’s FM radio played Somebody That I Used to Know by Gotye featuring Kimbra, and the whole warung fell quiet, like an audience watching somebody else’s break-up, though we had lived through this one for the better part of two years. The song tells a single parting through two voices and two versions, and so it was here: the Palace has its version, the Vice-President’s office has its version, and each is sure that only its own is right. We used to hear that name every morning, in headlines, in comment threads, even in the chatter on the warung bench; now it has moved into the category of ‘somebody we used to know’, with one difference: we have nothing to delete except the screenshots that stubbornly linger in our phone galleries. The retired schoolteacher nodded and closed the evening with the most useful advice of all: old acquaintances are welcome to leave, provided they leave the ticket behind. At the bottom of my glass, the grounds said nothing, like an old acquaintance who does not wish to be greeted but cannot be forgotten.

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A Letter Without Sugar

Notes on a letter that emptied a chair without giving a reason, a guessing game that outran its own invitation, and grounds that would like to become a lesson

On Thursday evening, my regular warung was full of people claiming to have seen it all coming since Tuesday, and the fritters vanished faster than usual. The long bench now rested on a block of wood nailed up the night before, replacing cardboard that had surrendered to the damp. Phones reported that shortly before noon the Vice-President had gone to the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR), handed in a letter of resignation, talked with the Assembly’s leaders for about twenty minutes, and left without a word to reporters. About three hours ahead of schedule, the House of Representatives cancelled the two o’clock plenary that was to have announced the motion on its right to state an opinion. The hundred and twenty signatures, so briskly stirred together the day before, stayed in their folder, never read out. Ironically, one sheet of paper emptied the chair faster than all that ink.

The retired schoolteacher at the window table read the letter through as if marking an exam script. The Assembly’s Speaker read it out to reporters: resignation from office at the Vice-President’s own request, with one line about guarding the nation and its people above oneself, and no cause given. Some reports say the Assembly’s leaders had at first not read it, but the sequence is reported inconsistently, so that goes on the plate marked unverified. In format it earns full marks; the box marked ‘show your working’ is blank. To me it is a letter without sugar: valid, brief, bitter, and leaving the whole warung to invent its own sweetness. An official who leaves without explanation leaves a hole, and holes fill quickly with gossip.

The business of the chair itself ran like a train afraid of being late. The Speaker declared the vice-presidency vacant from the moment of the resignation, and the Assembly has at most sixty days to fill it. The President summoned ministers and the Assembly’s leaders to the Palace, and the coordinating minister for law explained that one letter from the Assembly’s leadership to the President is enough to start the process. Dispatch is scheduled for Friday; from receipt, the President has fourteen days to put forward two names, while the Assembly prepares a team to verify candidates’ files and an ad hoc team to draft its decree. The President proposes, the Assembly chooses, and the people watch from the back bench. Beside a hundred and twenty signatures gathered in a day, sixty days sounds like a luxury; let us hope it is spent on checking, not merely on bargaining.

Before that invitation had even gone out, the guessing game was open. One outlet offered five names, another six, another seven; the lists swapped members like substitutes, and all spoke with confidence. A former coordinating minister named five on his personal channel, while a former deputy chair of the anti-corruption commission claimed to have heard that the choice would most likely come from within Gerindra. One customer even offered a packet of prawn crackers as a wager. All of it is conjecture or one-sided claim that I cannot check. In some lists the official now running the process has been tucked in too, which is again only media guesswork. We are quick to forecast who will sit, yet fumble when asked what qualifies anyone to sit.

The parties that were busy signing the motion yesterday are busy counting today. One researcher judges that the vacancy opens fresh room for bargaining between the President and the parties backing the government. Analysts can be wrong, but warung common sense grasps that an empty chair doubles as a negotiating table. Yesterday’s keyword was qualifications for office; today’s is composition. The right to state an opinion has drifted into the right to submit hopes. That is not forbidden, provided the haggling takes place in front of the customers rather than in the back kitchen.

What did not leave with the resignation are its questions. The Supreme Court’s ruling annulling the equivalency certificate still stands; who ought to have checked it upstream remains unanswered; and what it means for the past, nobody I have heard has explained. With the plenary cancelled, the Constitutional Court tested nothing. The schoolteacher shrugged: a pupil who transfers does not erase the school register, and the record of the move must still be tidied. Resignation closes the political chapter, not the governance one; the person has moved on, but the case is still on the table.

The way out is not complicated. The Palace and the Assembly need only post a single open calendar giving the date of the letter, the date the names are submitted and the date of the electing session, so that there are not three versions as there were this week. The President could announce criteria before naming anyone, then make sure both candidates’ educational records are examined by the verification team and a summary of the findings published before the session. The Assembly can turn the candidates’ duty under the MD3 Law to declare their readiness at its plenary into a forum for testing ideas, not a formality. The competent authorities should publish a chronology of how the equivalency certificate came to be issued, so the error is not repeated. The Vice-President who resigned is entitled to silence, but a short explanation in his own words would close the door on gossip without diminishing anyone’s rights. The media and we readers need only tell guesses from reports, and ask for criteria before names.

Near closing time, the owner poured a fresh glass for the last customer without asking who would win. The soil in the chilli pot by the door looked darker for last night’s grounds. The customer had ordered coffee without sugar. She served it without comment, merely setting a small spoon beside it in case he changed his mind. An empty chair, she said afterwards, is no excuse to let the table gather dust; what matters is that whoever sits down eventually brings their own papers. At the bottom of my glass the fresh sediment was settling slowly, and this time I did not rush to stir it.

While waiting for further developments, the customers and coffee-sippers no longer stared at their phones. The owner turned the dial of her old FM radio until the needle settled on a mournful frequency, and from it flowed Cavatina, composed by Stanley Myers and now better known as the theme from The Deer Hunter. The piece was originally written for another film in 1970, then reused by this one eight years later, and its journey is recorded as tidily as the owner’s receipt book: who composed it, what it was made for, when it was used again, all clear without a single equivalency certificate. The pedigree of a melody turns out to be better documented than the history of the frying oil in our tray; may other origins take lessons from it. The owner’s choice felt apt: the film is about ordinary people from a small town, pressed by great events beyond their control, and it ends in a bar, when words run out and old friends choose to sit together, then sing softly. The letter without a reason, too, leaves feelings unspoken. Of course our commotion is not a war; I am only borrowing the mood. The broadcast faded for a moment, swallowed by hiss, rather like those claims I cannot check: there is a signal, but not necessarily any content. The song ended, and the announcer merely read the weather forecast, sunny intervals, no official announcements. Nobody complained; at least that was news one could check by glancing at the sky. At the bottom of the glasses, the grounds settled without a sound, waiting and listening too.

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