When the Exit is Busier than the Entrance

Notes from a coffee stall on departing cadres and grounds that cannot be brewed twice

My regular warung, a roadside coffee stall, keeps an unwritten rule: customers may bring their own flask, but the glass belongs to the stall and must go back on the shelf. The rule crossed my mind this Tuesday evening, 10 November 2026, as news on the other customers’ phone screens spread faster than the steam from my coffee. Yesterday three senior figures of the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), a minister and two deputy ministers who also held seats at the heart of the party, took their leave almost in unison, some through personal social media posts, some by letter to the chairman. With their departure, no party member is any longer listed in the cabinet. I sip slowly; a stall like this teaches that news arriving in a bunch seldom has a single cause.

The chairman, according to a written statement in circulation, accepted the decisions respectfully and stressed that service to the state stands above the interests of any faction. The sentence is like black coffee measured just right: there is no reason to reject it out of hand. Running forests, population policy or culture is full-time work, and an official drawing up programmes can hardly attend branch consolidation meetings at the same time. Such a reason deserves a hearing before suspicion.

Even so, the tables of this warung disagree about the flavour. At the middle table, three men in thick spectacles, whom the owner calls the panel of experts, offer their readings. The first says the three were simply being realistic about which way the wind blows. The second judges it a manoeuvre to find a safe berth. The third reminds us that leaving a party does not necessarily mean abandoning the figure who once nurtured it. I mark all of this as conjecture; not one reading is proven, and all three sip their coffee without anyone stirring it. The owner, who has watched four general elections from behind the fritter display, merely raises an eyebrow: in her view, the cheapest interpretation always sells fastest.

The timing does raise questions. The farewells fell amid a noisy dispute over a Supreme Court ruling on the Vice President’s educational documents, the figure the party backed in the 2024 presidential race. This morning the House of Representatives opened its new session without taking up the matter, although its Speaker confirmed receiving a proposal to use the right to express an opinion. Whether the two events are connected, I have found no evidence; that is only whispering between tables. In politics, coincidence is rather like sugar in a sachet of instant coffee: always present, seldom acknowledged.

This evening’s fritter is the official statement: warm, savoury, quickly gone, and filling only briefly. What will not fit on the plate is the arithmetic. At the 2024 legislative election the party won 4,260,169 votes, or 2.80 per cent, leaving it short of the four per cent parliamentary threshold and without a seat in the national legislature. After yesterday, some observers expect the road to 2029 to grow steeper, an estimate and not a certainty. A party that set out with a youthful image and a willingness to criticise now faces the most homespun of questions: who is left to run the kitchen when the faces on the screen have gone to work elsewhere?

At the back table, a vegetable seller and a temporary-contract teacher count on their fingers. For them, a party is like a coffee supplier: what matters is not who stands at the display counter but whether the grounds arrive on time and the measure is honest. The seller admits he cannot name any of the three, yet remembers precisely who patrolled his market before elections and vanished afterwards. The teacher adds that faces may come and go, provided the promised allowance reaches the bank account. Voters’ tastes, it turns out, are plainer than the experts’ readings, and are rarely consulted when strategies are drawn up.

Yet the burden should not fall on a single glass. Other parties are just as used to welcoming figures on the rise and waving off those on the decline; defecting cadres are no patent of one colour. Voters play a part too: we love to praise fresh faces on billboards, then vote by family habit. Commentators, this writer included, also like to read grounds as if they were scripture. Grounds are pleasant to gaze at, but reading them in haste often makes the guess miss. And the government that took in these officials may fairly be asked how they divide their time between desk and politics, so that the state duty so often invoked shows in results.

The way out needs no incantations. A party could draft and announce an ethics code on holding dual roles, with its transition period, before any cadre is sworn in, so that departures need not be watched like a soap opera. Reasons for leaving can be disclosed in moderation, including what the organisation learns from them; an honest exit interview costs far less than an electability survey. Cadre-building should reach local officials who never stand in front of a camera. Voters can weigh track record and programmes rather than the splendour of banners, while we interpreters would do well to postpone verdicts until evidence arrives.

The woman who runs the stall gathers the glasses from every table and returns them to the shelf; none goes home, only each customer’s flask departs. At the bottom of my glass sits half a spoonful of grounds, calm and indifferent to anyone’s interpretation. I recall one lesson of this stall: a second cup brewed from the same grounds is merely coloured water. Perhaps that is why regulars stay loyal to the stall that is honest about its measures rather than the one with the loudest music. Trust, likewise, cannot be brewed twice from old grounds; it demands fresh beans in the form of clear programmes, promises kept, and honesty about why people come and go.

Bahasa

Gibran to Resign?

Notes from a coffee stall on the edge of town on an intention announced and a scrap of cardboard holding everything up

The long bench at my regular warung, a roadside coffee stall, always wobbles, because one leg is shorter than the other three. The woman who runs the stall, unwilling to throw out so old a bench, tucks a folded piece of cardboard under the short leg, and everyone sits calmly so long as nobody moves too much. This Tuesday evening, 10 November 2026, the bench felt wobblier than usual. A customer read out news from his phone: the State Secretary had confirmed that this morning Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka met the President for about two and a half hours and voiced an intention to resign. The President, according to that account, did not refuse and offered plenty of advice, while the Vice President asked for the chance to prove the validity of his documents through the Administrative Court. No formal resignation exists yet; all there is, so far, is an intention, and an intention, in this warung, is like an order not yet paid for.

The matter began with a slip of paper. In early October the Constitutional Court dismissed the petition in the presidential election dispute but, in its reasoning, noted that it had found no convincing evidence of an overseas diploma or comparable document that could serve as the basis for an equivalence ruling; at the same time it stressed that it had no power to disqualify an official already sworn in. Then, on 30 October, the Supreme Court, in cassation ruling No. 742 K/TUN/2026, annulled the equivalence certificate dated 6 August 2019, and the full text was published only today. The receipt is now declared invalid, though the coffee has long since been drunk, ever since the inauguration of October 2024. Must coffee already finished be treated as never ordered?

The table by the kitchen is occupied by two men who speak like instruction manuals. In their view, public office must not fall to criticism or sentiment; so long as no constitutional mechanism says otherwise, the mandate must be honoured. That view has defenders among legal scholars, who judge that the Supreme Court ruling does not automatically alter the Vice President’s standing. Other scholars hold the opposite: the ruling is retroactive and touches on whether the constitutional requirements are met. One receipt, two ways of counting, and both counts remain interpretations not yet tested by a competent forum. One of the men spoons three sugars into his glass, remarking that law is like black coffee: bitter, but not to be forced sweet.

The table by the door seats younger customers. They do not dispute the legal right but the matter of trust: democracy, they say, stands on two legs, a valid rule and the belief that it applies equally to all. One reminds the others that the age-limit ruling which opened the path to the 2023 candidacy was handed down when the then chief justice was afterwards found by an ethics council to have committed a serious breach, although the ruling itself was never overturned. The argument is strong as a matter of feeling, but feeling cannot be written into a verdict. Resigning is a legitimate ethical choice; making it compulsory through sentiment is another matter.

Most amusing is the way everyone passes round the hot fritters. The Constitutional Court says it has no power to remove; the Supreme Court annuls a document without deciding the fate of the office; the House of Representatives, which opened its new session this morning without discussing it, is said to be taking the matter up later, while some members have signed a proposal to use the right to express an opinion; the Palace announces an intention, not a decision. Each walks in its own lane. Only, fritters passed around too long go cold, and the first thing to catch a chill is public trust.

The other customers, myself included, are not clean spectators. Some parties yesterday said they respected the court’s ruling and today urge that the drama be ended quickly; others note that no rule requires a vice president to submit a resignation to the president. Social media users have suddenly grown fluent in Article 7A, though few had earlier opened the article on candidacy requirements. I myself concluded the fate of an office from half a headline. This warung has no vote in any session, but those who sip here are entitled to demand a plain explanation.

To be fair, voicing an intention while pursuing a court route need not be read as dithering. A person whose documents are questioned has the right to defend their validity, and an intention to resign can be understood as an effort to calm the situation. The trouble lies in timing: public questions will not wait for the hearing. The way out needs no incantations. A final decision could be announced with a measurable timetable, whether a formal resignation or staying on while pursuing the Administrative Court, so that the bench does not wobble for months. The competent institutions could explain the legal effect of the Supreme Court ruling, retroactive or not, so that the experts stop counting from different receipts. The House could handle the proposal on the right to express an opinion openly and to a schedule, whatever the outcome. And the election authorities need to check candidates’ qualification documents upstream, before registration closes, rather than downstream years later.

The woman who runs the stall arrives with a fresh, thicker piece of cardboard and slips it under the bench leg. The bench stops wobbling, but everyone knows the prop is only temporary. A wedge may help tonight; what is sound remains legs of equal length. Whether the answer turns out to be resignation or staying on, no one can say for certain this evening, and these notes deliberately do not guess. I finish my coffee, and at the bottom of the glass the grounds settle calmly, waiting for whoever has the authority to decide whether they are thrown out or left to pile up.

Bahasa