Maple Leaf Stories: Election Fraud (7)

"A news reporter is covering a helicopter crash. He then interviewed one of the rescue workers.

Reporter: 'Is the pilot safe?'

Rescuer: 'Yes, the pilot is safe.'

Reporter: 'What caused the accident?'

Rescuer: 'According to the pilot, he got cold, so he turned off the fan.'"

"When Paul Samuelson talked about scarcity, it was a consequence of human activity. When people were busy talking about the right of inquiry, plain rice seemed to be a scarcity," said Maple while looking at portraits of Lionel Robbins and Thomas Robert Malthus.

"Poverty is almost synonymous with hunger, at least, that's what we have in mind. No single event affecting the world’s poor has captured the public imagination and prompted collective generosity as much as the Ethiopian famine of the early 1980s and the resulting 'We Are the World' concert in March 1985, by the supergroup USA for Africa in 1985 written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie.

As the UN’s first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) defined, 'A 'poor' person was essentially as someone without enough to eat.' The delivery of food aid on a massive scale is a logistical nightmare. If governments insist on such policy despite the waste, it is not only because hunger and poverty are assumed to go hand in hand: The inability of the poor to feed themselves properly is also one of the most frequently cited root causes of a poverty trap. The intuition is powerful: The poor cannot afford to eat enough; this makes them less productive and keeps them poor.

Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo tell us a story about how such a poverty trap worked: 'Pak Solhin, who lives in a small village in the province of Bandung, Indonesia. His parents used to have a bit of land, but they also had thirteen children and had to build so many houses for each of them and their families that there was no land left for cultivation. Pak Solhin had been working as a casual agricultural worker, which paid up to 10,000 rupiah per day ($2 USD PPP) for work in the fields. However, a recent hike in fertilizer and fuel prices had forced farmers to economize. According to Pak Solhin, the local farmers decided not to cut wages but to stop hiring workers instead. Pak Solhin became unemployed most of the time: In the two months before we met him in 2008, he had not found a single day of agricultural labor. Younger people in this situation could normally find work as construction workers. But, as he explained, he was too weak for the most physical work, too inexperienced for more skilled labor, and at forty, too old to be an apprentice: No one would hire him.

As a result, Pak Solhin’s family—he and his wife, and their three children— were forced to take some drastic steps to survive. His wife left for Jakarta, approximately 80 miles away, where, through a friend, she found a job as a maid. But she did not earn enough to feed the children. The oldest son, a good student, dropped out of school at twelve and started as an apprentice on a construction site. The two younger children were sent to live with their grandparents. Pak Solhin himself survived on about 9 pounds of subsidized rice and on fish that he caught from the edge of a lake (he could not swim). His brother fed him once in a while. In the week before we last spoke with him, he had had two meals a day for four days, and just one for the other three.

Pak Solhin appeared to be out of options, and he clearly attributed his problem to food (or, more precisely, the lack of it). It was his opinion that the landowning peasants had decided to fire their workers instead of cutting wages because they thought that with the recent rapid increases in food prices, a cut in wages would push workers into starvation, which would make them useless in the field. This is how Pak Solhin explained to himself the fact that he was unemployed. Although he was evidently willing to work, lack of food made him weak and listless, and depression was sapping his will to do something to solve his problem.

But the idea of a nutrition-based poverty trap, which Pak Solhin explained to us, is very old. Its first formal statement in economics dates from 1958. The idea is simple. The human body needs a certain number of calories just to survive. So when someone is very poor, all the food he or she can afford is barely enough to allow for going through the motions of living and perhaps earning the meager income that the individual originally used to buy that food. This is the situation Pak Solhin saw himself in when we met him: the food he got was barely enough for him to have the strength to catch some fish from the bank.

As people get richer, they can buy more food. Once the basic metabolic needs of the body are taken care of, all that extra food goes into building strength, allowing people to produce much more than they need to eat merely to stay alive.

This simple biological mechanism creates an S—shaped relationship between income today and income tomorrow, very much as: The very poor earn less than they need to be able to do significant work, but those who have enough to eat can do serious agricultural work. This creates a poverty trap: The poor get poorer, and the rich get richer and eat even better, and get stronger and even richer, and the gap keeps increasing.

Although Pak Solhin’s logical explanation of how someone might get trapped in starvation was impeccable, Banerjee and Duflo added, there was something vaguely troubling about his narrative. We met him not in war-infested Sudan or in a flooded area of Bangladesh, but in a village in prosperous Java, where, there was clearly plenty of food available, and a basic meal did not cost much. He was clearly not eating enough when we met him, but he was eating enough to survive; why would it not pay someone to offer him the extra bit of nutrition that would make him productive in return for a full day’s work? More generally, although a hunger-based poverty trap is certainly a logical possibility, how relevant is it in practice, for most poor people today?

One reason the poverty trap might not exist is that most people have enough to eat. At least in terms of food availability, today we live in a world that is capable of feeding every person that lives on the planet. Starvation exists in today’s world, but only as a result of the way the food gets shared among us. If it happens, perhaps they are really less hungry, despite eating fewer calories. It could be that because of improvements in water and sanitation, they are leaking fewer calories in bouts of diarrhea and other ailments. Or maybe they are less hungry because of the decline of heavy physical work—with the availability of drinking water in the village, women do not need to carry heavy loads for long distances; improvements in transportation have reduced the need to travel on foot; in even the poorest village, flour is now milled by the village miller using a motorized mill, instead of women grinding it by hand. So it is not that the lack of food could not be a problem or isn’t a problem from time to time, but the world we live in today is for the most part too rich for it to be a big part of the story of the persistence of poverty.

Why did anemic Indonesian workers not buy iron-fortified fish sauce on their own? One answer is that it is not clear that the additional productivity translates into higher earnings if employers do not know that a well-nourished worker is more productive. Employers may not realize that their employees are more productive now because they have eaten more, or better. The Indonesian study found a significant increase in earnings only among self-employed workers. If the employers pay everyone the same flat wage, there would be no reason to eat more to get stronger.

Most adults, even the very poor, are outside of the nutrition poverty trap zone: They can easily eat as much as they need to be physically productive.

This was probably the case with Pak Solhin. This not to say that he was not trapped. But his problem may have come from the fact that his job had vanished, and he was too old to be taken as an apprentice on a construction site. His situation was almost surely made worse by the fact that he was depressed, which made it difficult for him to do anything at all.'

This argument questions the 'free lunch' program launched by a pair of candidates who were endorsed by the the incumbent in Indonesia 2024 presidential election in Indonesia. Apart from the poverty trap and the availability of jobs, in Banerjee and Duflo's research in Indonesia, it was found that health certainly has the potential to be a source of a number of different traps. For example, workers living in an unhealthy environment may miss many workdays; children may be sick often and unable to do well in school; mothers who give birth there may have sickly babies. Each of these channels is potentially a mechanism for current misfortunes to turn into future poverty. Free lunche program are not a solution, or maybe just to persuade people, 'just eat, and let us take care over of what we desire.'

From access to land, through methods of farming, food processing, and finally, to food distribution, imagine you could have a say in how the whole food system is designed. Wouldn’t it be just great? And that’s exactly what food sovereignty is about - it’s the ability of your focal community, of the people in your region or in your country to decide how the food system works. If necessary, some issues could even be decided at the international level, but it’s the local level that is the most important. Since most of us live in democratic countries, how is it possible that we are not directly involved in decision­ making with regards to food? Well, that’s because in most countries the democratic process is not really that democratic. There are elections every 4 or 5 years, we cast a vote and that’s it. Democracy is over, we can go home and politicians will take care of all the rest.

Yet food sovereignty is much more than just decision-making, says Marcin Gerwin. The concept of food sovereignty was first introduced in 1996 by an international farmers organization, La Via Campesina. According to La Via Campesina, 'Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It develops a model of small-scale sustainable production benefiting communities and the environment. It puts the aspirations, needs and livelihoods of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of the food systems and

policies rather than the demands of the markets and corporations. Food sovereignty prioritizes local food production and consumption. It gives a country right to protect its local producers from cheap imports and to control production. It ensures that the rights to use and manage lands, territories, water, seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of those who produce food and not the corporate sector.'

What La Via Campesina promotes is a broader vision of agriculture and economy that includes social justice, real democracy, and care for the environment.

Management reforms of the past two decades have assumed that performance will improve when (1) managers have clear goals and results are measured against these goals, (2) managers have flexibility in resource use, (3) government decisions focus on outputs and outcomes rather than on inputs and procedures, and (4) managers are held accountable for the use of resources and the results produced.

In the case of elections, it is possible to accomplish these four goals, but only if the election officials have thought about performance management at the outset. In elections, poll workers are only as good as their procedures and processes allow them to be. Elections have clear goals, clear sets of customers, and numerous opportunities for data collection and improvement. By having an array of data, across the full spectrum of election-related processes and activities, election officials can communicate effectively about what it is they do, what resources they need to get the job done, and how policy can be improved to make these activities and processes work better.

The presidency is a prime symbol of our national unity. The election of the president (with his alternate, the vice-president) is the one of political act that we perform together as a nation: voting in the presidential election is certainly the political choice most significant to people. An important question we need to ask: Have elections been run with a high degree of integrity, free from fraud?

The foundation for international standards is Article 21(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). This specifies: 'The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Agreement about the principles that should govern the conduct of elections was further specified in Article 25 of the UN International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR of 1966), namely the need for: Periodic elections at regular intervals; Universal suffrage, which includes all sectors of society; Equal suffrage, in the idea of one-person, one-vote; The right to stand for public ofice and contest elections; The rights of all eligible electors to vote; The use of a secret ballot process; Genuine elections; and that Elections should relect the free expression of the will of the people.

According to Pippa Norris, the election may fail to achieve its aims. Numerous types of laws and failures undermine elections. In some, opponents are disqualified. District boundaries are gerrymandered. Campaigns provide a skewed playing field for parties. Independent media are muzzled. Citizens are ill-informed about choices. Balloting is disrupted by bloodshed. Ballot boxes are stuffed. Vote counts are fiddled. Opposition parties withdraw. Contenders refuse to accept the people’s choice. Protests disrupt polling. Officials abuse state resources. Electoral registers are out of date. Candidates distribute largesse. Votes are bought. Airwaves favor incumbents. Campaigns are awash with hidden cash. Political finance rules are lax. Incompetent local oficials run out of ballot papers. Incumbents are immune from effective challengers. Rallies trigger riots. Women candidates face discrimination. Ethnic minorities are persecuted officials. Voting machines jam. Lines lengthen. Ballot box seals break. Citizens cast more than one ballot. Laws suppress voting rights. Polling stations are inaccessible. Software crashes. 'Secure' ink washes off fingers. Courts fail to resolve complaints impartially. Each of these problems can generate contentious elections characterized by lengthy court challenges, opposition boycotts, public protest, or, at worst, if the authorities threaten to use violent force, the people will likely respond with more deadly violence. In some, failures are intentional; elsewhere, they arise through happenstance, although it is tricky to nail down which is which.

Electoral integrity refers to contests respecting international standards and global norms governing the appropriate conduct of elections. Lack of integrity has many serious consequences, with the capacity to undermine the legitimacy of elected authorities, to erode satisfaction with democracy, to reduce public confidence in political parties and parliaments, and to weaken electoral turnout. Violent protests can destabilize states, especially in hybrid regimes lacking the coercive powers of absolute autocracies and the legitimacy of mature democracies. In emerging economies such as Kenya and Thailand, disputed procedures have generated instability and undermined investor confidence. Competitive multiparty elections are the bedrock for democratic accountability, linking citizens and the state, empowering electors to 'throw the rascals out' if dissatisfied by unpopular leaders. Where contentious elections are seriously lawed, or even failed, however, this mechanism is far from suficient to rid the world of corrupt, venal, or incompetent rulers, prompting critical citizens to resort to the barricades rather than ballots. The vertical chain of electoral accountability linking citizens and authorities becomes corroded or broken. Elections alone are not suficient guarantees for democratic governance, where other horizontal channels of public account- ability remain weak, but they remain the foundation.

The most serious violations are commonly thought to arise in 'electoral autocracies'–regimes with a façade of multiparty competition but with serious and persistent restrictions on human rights and democratic institutions, where power is disproportionately in the hands of the ruling party. A growing body of research has sought to explain why authoritarian leaders risk the uncertainty of holding multiparty elections and how these contests function to legitimate ruling parties, deflect international criticism, and undermine opposition dissent. It would be a serious mistake to assume that problems of electoral integrity are confined to these electoral autocracies, however, as certain types of irregularities, including protests, occur most commonly in many hybrid regimes.

In Indonesia, the People's Representative Council of the Republic of Indonesia (or Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Republik Indonesia, DPR; Alternatively translatable as the House of Representatives or the House of Representatives of the Republic of Indonesia) was strengthened in the constitutional system after changes to the 1945 Constitution. The amendment to the 1945 Constitution states that the DPR's supervisory function is carried out through monitoring the implementation of policies, namely the implementation of laws and  the State Revenue and Expenditure Budget (Anggaran Pendapatan dan Belanja Negara; APBN). Institutionally, the DPR has three main rights in carrying out its supervisory function, namely the right to ask the executive for information (right of interpellation), the right to conduct an investigation (right of inquiry), and the right to express an opinion on executive policies.

These three supervisory functions—the right to interpellation, the right to inquiry and to express an opinion—are different from 'Impeachment'. According to Charles L. Black, Jr., strictly speaking, 'impeachment' means 'accusation' or 'charge.' In America, the House of Representatives has, under the Constitution, the 'sole Power of Impeachment'—that is to say, the power to bring charges of the commission of one or more impeachable offenses. These charges are conventionally called 'Articles of Impeachment.' The House 'impeaches' by simple majority vote of those present. The Senate 'tries' all impeachments—it determines, on evidence presented, whether the charge in each Article of Impeachment is true, and whether, if the charge is true, the acts that are proven constitute an impeachable offense. Such an affirmative finding is called a “conviction” on the Article of Impeachment being voted upon. A two-thirds majority of the senators present is necessary for conviction.

This two-stage procedure was borrowed from the British model (impeachment by the House of Commons and trial and conviction by the House of Lords). It is also analogous, obviously, to the two stages in traditional English and American criminal law—'indictment' (or charge) by the grand jury, and 'trial' by another jury.

According to Lili Romli, the DPR as a legislative institution, apart from having the function of forming laws (legislative function) and budgeting (budgeting function), also has a supervisory function. The DPR's supervisory function is a means of control over executive or government institutions. Through this function, the checks and balances mechanism, mutual control and balance, between the DPR and the executive can be enforced and realized well.

The existence of the DPR's supervisory function over the executive is vital because it ensures and ensures that executive power and policies are not misused and/or misappropriated, under the constitution and laws. Therefore, the existence of the DPR's supervisory function is an effort to prevent centralization or abuse of executive power.

As a means of control, every member of the DPR has the right to ask the government questions regarding an issue. Questions are usually asked orally or written, at a general meeting or working meeting with the government represented by the minister. During these meetings, the minister will provide verbally or written answers.

Regarding the right of interpellation, the executive is obliged to explain in a plenary session, then discuss with the members, and end with a vote on whether the government's statement is satisfactory or not. If the voting results are negative, this is a warning sign to the government that their policies are questionable.

As for the right to inquiry, an inquiry committee is formed which reports the results of its investigation to other members of the DPR, who then formulate their opinion on this issue in the purpose that the government will pay attention to it. The right to express an opinion is the right to express ideas about government policies or extraordinary events that occur in the country or internationally. This right is also used as a follow-up to the implementation of the right of interpellation and the right of inquiry or allegations that the president and/or vice president have violated the law, whether in the form of treason against the state, corruption, bribery, other serious criminal acts, or disgraceful acts, and/or the president and /or vice president no longer meets the requirements as president and/or vice president.

No matter, then, can be of higher political importance than our considering whether, in any given instance, this act of choice is to be undone, with the worst consequence that the chosen president dismissed from office in disgrace. Everyone must shrink from this most drastic of measures. The Framers of our Constitution very clearly envisaged the occasional necessity of this awful step. However, this step needs to be taken, to avoid the death of democracy. And Allah knows best."

As winter had not yet come, summer was still going on, maple turned color as she sang,

Sing, "Hello world, it feels so good to be home"

Lost in the dark, but I'll never be alone

Sing, "Hello world, it feels so good to be home"

Hello, hello, hello world

I open my eyes and said hello to the world *)

Citations & References:

- Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, 2011, Public Affairs

- Marcin Gerwin (Ed.), Introduction to Food Sovereignty: Food and Democracy, 2011, Alliance of Associations Polish Green Network

Philip Bobbit & Charles L. Black, Impeachment: A Handbook New Edition, 2018, Yale University Press

- R. Michael Alvarez, Lonna Rae Atkeson & Thad E. Hall, Evaluating Elections: A Handbook of Methods and Standards, 2013, Cambridge University Press

- Pippa Norris, Why Elections Fail, 2015, Cambridge University Press

- Wawan Ichwanuddin & Syamsuddin Harris (Eds.), Pengawasan DPR Era Reformasi: Realitas Penggunaan Hak Interpelasi, Angket dan Menyatakan Pendapat, 2014, LIPI

*) "Hello World" written by Mats Lie Skare, Alan Walker, Oyvind Sauvik, Anders Froen, Gunnar Greve, Fredrik Borch Olsen, Jim Bergsted, Marcus Arnbekk, Sander Meland, Rosanna Ener & Torine Bjaland

[Episode 6]

[Episode 1]

Bahasa

Maple Leaf Stories: Election Fraud (6)

"A husband and wife are on a trip to Bali. While enjoying the romantic atmosphere of Kuta Beach, they reminisce about the first time they met.

Wife: 'Do you love me just because my father left me a fortune?'

Husband: 'Not at all, darling. I would love you no matter who left you the money.'"

"One could tell the story of human civilization as a story of how we learned to trust one another,' Maple continued and kept her eyes on rock carvings of elephants at Borobudur temple.

Elephants possess memories that enable them to recognize other elephants, and even humans, for a lifetime. The elephant rock carvings on this temple reveal that elephants use their vivid memories of past experiences, such as hunger, to help them survive future hardships. The carvings remind us to respect and remember our relationships, elephants are a perfect icon for loyalty and trust.

"We learned first to share the spoils of a group hunt instead of hunting and eating. Working together, we could build pyramids. But working together means relying on others, and this creates opportunities for shirking—for some members of the group to take advantage of others. We needed to find ways to create trust. Over time, we developed governments and rules to help manage these dilemmas of cooperation, but those rules also need trust to function.

Every game has rules, and so does every society. The institutions that govern us are the beliefs and norms, the invisible rules, that constrain how we act. We follow the institutions because of our expectations of what will happen if we follow and what will happen to us if we don’t. Those expectations create norms of behavior and rules. Those norms or rules are a large part of what we call culture, says Benjamin Ho.

The institutions are central to trust because most human institutions rely on trust to function. Societies develop institutions to solve the problems they face, from the problems of collective action to the allocation of scarce resources. More specifically, modern institutions like markets, courts, and democracies, all rely on trust at many levels.

The second reason why institutions are central to trust is the fact that so many of our human institutions are designed around facilitating trust. The story of human civilization has been about building bigger and greater things by learning to cooperate on ever-larger scales.

Trust is a belief in the trustworthiness of the person we interact with. Our beliefs are based on the information we receive, and many human institutions are about spreading and curating the flow of information. Trustworthiness is a character trait of someone who acts in a manner that justifies the trust placed in them. Trustworthiness could vary for different people in different situations, and while they reflect some internal moral compass, those internal values often originate from some outside institutional influence.

There two senses in which trust has long been associated with government, says Russel Hardin. One tradition is stated well in the ancient Greek 'Anonymous Iamblichi': 'The first result of lawfulness is trust, which greatly benefits all people and is among the greatest goods. The result of trust is that property has common benefits, so that even just a little property suffices since it is circulated, whereas without this even a great amount does not suffice. In essence, law enables people to trust and therefore to exchange, to their great benefit.

Governments come in many forms and play many roles. An alternative notion of the purpose of government, goes back to at least Thomas Hobbes, is the government as centralizer of power. In the modern economy, governments make the rules, collect taxes, and provide social services. Crucial to its ability to function in this capacity, the government has to be able to make rules and expect that they will be followed. Most of the time, we don’t give much thought to why we follow the rules. The traditional view is that we follow the rules because if we don’t, there will be consequences. If we don’t pay our taxes, there will be a fine. If we don’t pay the fine, our property will be seized. If we don’t give up our property, we face jail time. If we refuse jail time, we face the risk of violence.

Hobbes argued that citizens put up with this system because the order created by government is better than the nasty world that would exist without government. People follow through on transactions, contribute taxes, and eschew violence because of the implicit threat of punishment; they put up with being threatened because it is better than living in society ungoverned. This is a rigid view of government based on strict rules, and it does not acknowledge the role of trust and human relationships.

According to Hardin, trust in government is not a major consideration in the working of a modem society, but the trust among themselves that a good government enables its citi­ zens to have is very important in their lives. A claim that one trusts government is not closely analo­gous to a claim that one trusts another person. The seeming goodness and importance of ordinary interpersonal trust does not clearly transfer to any nonanalogous notion of trust in government.

Adam Smith noted that even in an individualistic, free-market economy, the magic comes from how the market coordinates the division of labor: a factory of pin makers, each specializing in one part of the production, can produce vastly more pins than an equal number of traditional pin makers working alone. Those rules became formalized by governments, which expanded their scope into all parts of our daily lives. Governments, particularly democratic governments, rely on the rule of law, and the functioning of the rule of law relies on trust as well. Each institutional development allowed our circle of trust to grow, but each also made whom and how we trust more impersonal—a characteristic of the modern market economy.

Trust is taken for granted, even though it is essential. The role that trust plays in the modern economy is not often acknowledged in either economics courses or popular culture. In most modern democracies, it has been decided that we can’t trust the people in power to control the supply of money. A better version of that statement is that everyone, including the people in power, is better off if elected officials do not have direct control of the money supply.

U.S. law has required all U.S. currency to contain the words 'In God We Trust' since 1956, although the phrase has been used regularly on U.S. coins and bills since 1864. The aim of facilitating trust—not in God, perhaps, but in money itself—drives many decisions about U.S. currency design, according to Ho.

Rulers could benefit from having the ability to produce money when needed (especially to wage war), and citizens also could benefit from the more liquid money supply. However, rulers were constrained by distrust. People knew that the temptation to print too much money was too great. Rulers faced a similar problem when it came to borrowing money. Governments issue bonds to borrow money from citizens. This practice is especially common in times of war. Issuing bonds may seem different from printing money, but in practice they are very similar.

According to Ronald Inglehart, relatively high levels of subjective well-being and interpersonal trust are conducive to the stability of democratic institutions. Low levels of subjective well-being and interpersonal trust may play an important role in the collapse of authoritarian regimes. Economic development is conducive to democracy not only because it mobilizes the mass publics, but also because it encourages supportive cultural orientations. Economic development is also conducive to cultural changes that help stabilize democracy. Mass political culture is crucial to the long-term stability of democracy: Political culture stabilizes democracy by providing a climate of trust and an enduring base of mass support.

Democratic institutions depend on trust that the opposition will accept the rules of the democratic process. You must view your political opponents as a loyal opposition who will not imprison or execute you if you surrender political power to them, but can be relied on to govern within the laws and to surrender power if your side wins the next election.

When people are dissatisfied with politics, added Inglehart, they may change the parties in office. When the people of a given society become dissatisfied with their lives, they may reject the regime – or even the political community.

Many sociologists have maintained that trust is the glue of social life. For politics, economics, and personal well-being, social trust is a valuable resource. According to Trudy Govier, trust and distrust in politics or government can mean many things. Most discussions of such distrust focus on issues of integrity—honesty, reliability, promise-keeping, principled action, and lack of hypocrisy. These are fiduciary responsibilities; people in public office must be faithful to the duties and responsibilities of their office. But expectations of competence are also essential for trust, in politics as elsewhere.

Competence is not a purely intellectual or technical matter that can be separated from ethical aspects of character. And for integrity to be meaningful, one needs competence: one needs to be aware of how one is acting and what particular contexts demand. Moral integrity and trustworthiness presuppose this personal competence. Overall good judgment about priorities and personal qualities is tremendously important.

People sometimes distrust government action because they believe the requisite officials and civil servants are incompetent—too inefficient, or insufficiently knowledgeable to implement a task they have set for themselves. There are different people and institutions within politics and government, and we may distinguish among these on grounds of trust. At the national level, we might think of trusting the leader, the Cabinet, the governing party, the elected members from the governing party, the whole body of elected representatives, or our favourite political party or locally elected representative. Alternatively, we might concern ourselves with civil servants and governmental institutions as distinct from elected representatives. To speak of trusting or distrusting politicians is to focus on elected representatives and those who seek election. But to speak of trusting government can mean either politicians or civil servants and institutions.

In reflecting on trust and politics, we naturally come to the matter of leadership. In Western industrial democracies, says Govier, the elected leader has been selected as leader of a political party that seeks an electoral mandate to govern. A political leader must lead in a variety of contexts, the most obvious and most important being the political party, the government, and the public itself. The political leader may be the leader of a party, the head of government, and, in a different and less formal sense, the leader of the people. He or she has several distinct leadership roles, and different contexts call for different leadership skills. Approachability, public speaking skills, and charisma are especially important in relating to the public, while facilitation, negotiation, and mediation skills are central in managing the caucus within the political party. Original ideas, understanding of issues, knowledge, and attention to detail are important in the actual running of government. Few individuals have all the qualities necessary for the many con- texts in which a modern leader functions. Different people have dif- ferent styles of leadership, which suit different situations. There is no one thing called leadership and no one way of doing it right. But no matter who and no matter how, effective leadership always requires a considerable degree of trust. Generally speaking, the greater the trust, the more effective the leader.

A person will not be the chosen leader of a political party unless most party members have confidence in him or her. The need for trust is still more obvious when we consider some of the specific functions of a party leader. With the public, the party leader is a kind of key communicator for the party. To be elected and run a government, a leader needs some degree of public trust. There are different styles and models of leadership, but all leadership styles presuppose trust in the leader.

Democratic societies are trusting societies. Trust matters. People who trust others have an expansive view of their community and this helps connect them to people who are different from themselves. It also leads people to seek common ground when they disagree on solutions to public issues, says Eric M. Uslaner. Trust is not an all-purpose solution to society’s problems. It won’t get people involved in civic groups or in political life. But it does have other, perhaps even more important consequences. Because trust links us to people who are different from ourselves, it makes cooperation and com- promise easier.

A civil society is a cooperative society. Trust may not be the only route to cooperation. But trust can make it easier to solve recurring collective action problems, since goodwill eliminates much hard bargaining at the outset of each negotiation, and should make it more likely that some compromise will be reached. People who trust others should also be the most likely to endorse the prevailing moral code in their communities. Cooperation and compromise can only flourish when people respect each other, despite their differences. So a trusting community is a tolerant community, where discrimination is anathema, says Uslaner.

If there is a conflict in public trust in state administrators, concrete actions should be taken to resolve it. Trust is central to human existence. Like all social animals, human beings have an instinctive need to cooperate and rely on each other in order to satisfy their most basic emotional, psychological, and material needs. Without trust, we are not only less happy as individuals but also less productive in groups. Research has linked the virtues and benefits of trust to economic prosperity, societal stability, and even human survival, says Robert F. Hurley. The powerful effect of trust is that it enables cooperative behavior without costly and cumbersome monitoring and contracting. Trust is a form of social capital that enhances performance between individuals, within and among groups, and in larger collectives (for example, organizations, institutions, and nations).

Distrust can be healthy and advisable, but when present in the extreme and in the wrong situations, it corrodes the cooperative instinct. It turns collaborative exchange into a slow and anxious mess of protective maneuvers.

Without trust, people are more anxious and less happy; leaders without trust have slower and more cautious followers; organizations without trust struggle to be productive; governments without trust lose essential civic cooperation; and societies without trust deteriorate, says Hurley. If we cannot generate adequate and reasonable perceptions of trust, through agents acting in a trustworthy manner, our lives will be more problematic and less prosperous.

We'll continue our discussion in the next sessions, bi 'idhnillah."

Citations & References:

- Benjamin Ho, Why Trust Matters: An Economist's Guide to the Ties that Bind Us, 2021, Columbia University Press

- Valerie Braithwaite & Margaret Levi (Eds.), Trust and Governance, 1998, Russell Sage Foundation

- Mark E. Warren (Ed.), Democracy and Trust, 1999, Cambridge University Press

- Trudy Govier, Social Trust and Human Communities, 1997, McGill-Queen's University Press

- Eric M. Uslaner, The Moral Foundations of Trust, 2002, Cambridge University Press

- Robert F. Hurley, The Decision to Trust: How Leaders Create High-Trust Organizations, 2012, Jossey-Bass

[Episode 7]

[Episode 5]

Bahasa

Maple Leaf Stories: Election Fraud (5)

"It was mealtime during the flight on the small airline. 'Would you like dinner?' the flight attendant asked the man.

'What are my choices?' he asked.

'Yes or no,' the attendant replied."

"Those in our inner circles, at work, in life and social situations have significant influences on our thinking and behavior. Consequently, we must take great care when deciding whom we will, and will not, let into our inner circles of confidants," said Maple while examining the golden chain symbol on the Garuda's shield.

"There is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy, and civilization throughout the world—one thing which, if removed, will destroy the most powerful government, the most successful business, the most thriving economy, the most influential leadership, the greatest friendship, the strongest character, the deepest love. On the other hand, if developed and leveraged, that one thing has the potential to create unparalleled success and prosperity in every dimension of life. Yet, it is the least understood, most neglected, and most underestimated possibility of our time. That one thing is, according to Stephen M.R. Covey, trust.

Trust is the expectation that arises within a community of regular, honest, and cooperative behavior, based on commonly shared norms, on the part of other members of that community. Those norms can be about deep 'value' questions like the nature of God or justice, but they also encompass secular norms like professional standards and codes of behavior, says Francis Fukuyama. That is, we trust a doctor not to do us deliberate injury because we expect him or her to live by the Hippocratic oath and the standards of the medical profession. Trust does not reside in integrated circuits or fiber optic cables. Although it involves an exchange of information, trust is not reducible to information.

Social capital is a capability that arises from the prevalence of trust in a society or in certain parts of it. It can be embodied in the smallest and most basic social group, the family, as well as the largest of all groups, the nation, and in all the other groups in between. Social capital differs from other forms of human capital insofar as it is usually created and transmitted through cultural mechanisms like religion, tradition, or historical habit.

People who do not trust one another, Fukuyama added, will end up cooperating only under a system of formal rules and regulations, which have to be negotiated, agreed to, litigated, and enforced, sometimes by coercive means. This legal apparatus, serving as a substitute for trust, entails what economists call 'transaction costs.' Widespread distrust in a society, in other words, imposes a kind of tax on all forms of economic activity, a tax that high-trust societies do not have to pay.

According to Covey, trust undergirds and affects the quality of every relationship, every communication, every work project, every business venture, every effort in which we are engaged. It changes the quality of every present moment and alters the trajectory and outcome of every future moment of our lives—both personally and professionally.

Contrary to what most people believe, trust is not some soft, illusive quality that you either have or you don’t; rather, trust is a pragmatic, tangible, actionable asset that you can create—much faster than you probably think possible.

While corporate scandals, terrorist threats, office politics, and broken relationships have created low trust on almost every front, I contend that the ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust is not only vital to our personal and interpersonal well-being; it is the key leadership competency of the new global economy.

So what is trust? Simply put, trust means confidence. The opposite of trust—distrust—is suspicion. You know it when you feel it. When you trust people, you have confidence in them—in their integrity and in their abilities. When you distrust people, you are suspicious of them—of their integrity, their agenda, their capabilities, or their track record. It’s that simple.

The difference between a high-and low-trust relationship is palpable! Take communication. In a high-trust relationship, you can say the wrong thing, and people will still get your meaning. In a low-trust relationship, you can be very measured, even precise, and they’ll still misinterpret you.

Most of us tend to think about trust in terms of character—of being a good or sincere person or of having ethics or integrity. And character is absolutely foundational and essential. But to think that trust is based on character only is a myth. Trust is a function of two things: character andcompetence. Character includes your integrity, your motive, your intent with people. Competence includes your capabilities, your skills, your results, your track record. And both are vital.

With the increasing focus on ethics in our society, the character side of trust is fast becoming the price of entry in the new global economy. However, the differentiating and often ignored side of trust—competence—is equally essential. You might think a person is sincere, even honest, but you won’t trust that person fully if he or she doesn’t get results. And the opposite is true. A person might have great skills and talents and a good track record, but if he or she is not honest, you’re not going to trust that person either.

While it may come more naturally for us to think of trust in terms of character, it’s equally important that we also learn to think in terms of competence. Think about it—people trust people who make things happen. They give the new curriculum to their most competent instructors. They give the promising projects or sales leads to those who have delivered in the past. Recognizing the role of competence helps us identify and give language to underlying trust issues we otherwise can’t put a finger on. From a line leader’s perspective, the competence dimension rounds out and helps give trust its harder, more pragmatic edge.

Here’s another way to look at it: The increasing concern about ethics has been good for our society. Ethics (which is part of character) is foundational to trust, but by itself is insufficient. You can’t have trust without ethics, but you can have ethics without trust. Trust, which encompasses ethics, is the bigger idea. Again, character and competence are both necessary. Character is a constant; it’s necessary for trust in any circumstance. Competence is situational; it depends on what the circumstance requires.

Once you become aware that both character and competence are vital to trust, you can see how the combination of these two dimensions is reflected in the approach of effective leaders and observers everywhere. People might use different words to express the idea, but if you reduce the words to their essence, what emerges is a balance of character and competence. Trust is equal parts character and competence. Both are absolutely necessary. From the family room to the boardroom, you can look at any leadership failure, and it’s always a failure of one or the other.

For one, it’s better to be a good guy than a bad guy—it’s better to be a trustworthy person than not, says Linda K. Stroh. There’s a flip side to the good guy–bad guy equation. If relationships don’t meet the standard of trustworthiness, we can suffer the negative effects of working with, living with, or otherwise sharing time with people we can’t trust.

In economic terms, the opportunity cost of not trusting—in wasted time, money, mental energy, and physical and emotional health—is immense. In- stead of enjoying life, we focus on protecting ourselves from negative influences—bad guys—who might lie or cheat to gain something that is ours: resources, money, time, friendships, or, most of all, our peace of mind.

Trust like water, air, and electricity, is something we just take for granted; if we lose it—not unlike losing electricity or water—we realize its importance to our lives. We can live without it, but it isn’t much fun. Everything we have to do takes longer, and we have to learn how to live and/or work all over again. Trust is the foundation of all successful human relationships. When trust is present, professional and personal relationships thrive. When trust is broken, relationships falter.

Trust is a willingness to be vulnerable—a willingness to take a risk that someone will not harm us, Stroh added. When we place our trust in another person, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, because we have positive expectations of another’s behavior.

Not only is there an expectation that the person(s) we trust will not harm us, even when we are not present to monitor their behaviors, but we also assume they will help us, even when we’re not present to remind them. The expectation is that the trusted party will work to protect—and even ad- vance—our interests, or, at a minimum, not conduct activities that will harm us in any way. We like to think that our trusted confidants will actually advance our cause, even when we're not in front of them. They’ll mention us positively to others, recommend us for jobs, or tell us where to buy our shoes.

Trust is more than mere instinct, says Stroh. Grasping the concept of trustworthiness may seem obvious and simple—but it’s not! Trust is complex. Many people claim they have a strong instinct about whom they can and can’t trust, almost a seat-of-the-pants belief they can sense who is and who isn’t trustworthy. What some people label instinct is really a product of life experiences melded with reflective observation—in other words, experiential learning. Instinct in humans, unlike instinct in other species, is too strongly influenced by external factors—our upbringing, inner circle of friends, family, neighbors, neighborhoods, and everything that touches our lives—to be considered pure.

Instinct or intuition may easily become the basis for stereotyping. For example, some folks may have intuitions (that may later evolve into stereotypes) that women lack both the physical stamina and mental discipline necessary to lead our country. Others may falsely believe that most people can be trusted in work and life. In its purest form, instinct has merit. However, our instincts can become flawed over time, as reflected in the number of people who are hurt, surprised, shocked, or dismayed when they are betrayed by someone they trusted. Instinct alone rarely works to predict trustworthiness.

Trust is widely acknowledged to be critical, according to Cam Caldwell, in cooperative relationships and a key variable in organizational achievement. Trust integrates an individual’s beliefs, attitudes, and intentions and is ultimately manifest as behaviors. Trust is, ultimately, the relinquishing of personal control to another in the expectant hope that the other party will honor perceived duties owed.

Leaders earn the trust of those whom they serve by being perceived as trustworthy, and the degree of that trustworthiness creates a subjective response that reflects the perceiver’s individual commitment or compliance. Trust, like religious faith, requires a willingness to act that must ultimately be carried out to be optimally effective in one’s personal life, in relationships, and in organizations. It is no secret that leaders and organizations have struggled throughout time to earn the confidence of others– whether those 'others' be customers, colleagues, or employees. Leading is tough. It requires the balance and ability to understand what needs to be done and the most effective way to sustain collaborative relationships to build team commitment and trust. Leadership failures are common. Successful and effective leaders are highly prized.

When followers trust a leader, their relationship reflects not only a difference in the mental mindset and emotional feelings of followers but in follower behaviors. Wise leaders have recognized the value of creating high-trust organization cultures to engender these responses. The empirical evidence consistently confirms that high-trust organizations are more profitable, more effective in creating relationships with others, and more innovative.

Trust is so critical in the leader-follower relationship, understanding the nature of trustworthiness, or what is required for a leader to be perceived as 'worthy' of trust, is also vital. Leaders who possess the ability to be trusted differentiate themselves from would-be leaders who struggle to earn the respect and commitment required to succeed in today’s difficult world.

Trustworthiness reflects the trustor’s subjective perceptions of a leader’s behaviors, reputation, and/or commitments in several very specific ways. Trustworthiness at the individual and organizational levels consists of five factors.

Ability or Competence–Trustworthy leaders demonstrate a profound understanding of the needs of their customers, the nature of their industry, the context of the economy, and the systems necessary to produce and deliver products and services in the marketplace. This standard of excellence requires an understanding of 'profound knowledge' that others rarely possess.

Integrity or Character–As leaders keep their commitments, tell the truth and honor relationships, they earn the respect of others. Integrity and character are highly desired personal attributes of leaders.

Beneficence or Caring–The leader’s commitment to the welfare, growth, and wholeness of others is demonstrated by treating others with kindness, courtesy, and respect. Leaders generate trust by valuing others as important ends, rather than as means to the leader’s agenda. Beneficence, the behavior, reflects benevolent intention.

Execution or Capacity–Leaders demonstrate the capacity to integrate the efforts of the organization to produce results. Execution requires that leaders achieve desired outcomes and results by understanding how to put a plan into action.

Integrity or Character–As leaders keep their commitments, tell the truth and honor relationships, they earn the respect of others. Integrity and character are highly desired personal attributes of leaders.

Execution or Capacity–Leaders demonstrate the capacity to integrate the efforts of the organization to produce results. Execution requires that leaders achieve desired outcomes and results by understanding how to put a plan into action. Although the ability to develop a clear action plan or strategy is important for success, the effective execution of a plan is far more important.

Fairness or Conscience–Leaders who treat others justly recognize their moral obligation to make the choices that protect others’ rights, treat them equitably, and recognize their respective needs. As leaders explain the rationale for the decisions that they make, they communicate their responsibility for the impact of their actions. Conscience is the moral sense within an individual that guides a person to act virtuously and to treat others fairly.

Leaders undermine follower trust when they are perceived as acting in ways that lack the elements of trustworthiness. Thus, trust is lost when leaders do not demonstrate personal competence, fail to honor commitments or perceived obligations, treat others as objects rather than individuals, underperform in ensuring that the organization achieves its goals, or violate expected standards of ethical conduct.

We will discuss the implications of trust in democracy and government in the next session, bi 'idhnillah."

Citations & References:

- Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, 1995, Free Press

- Stephen M.R. Covey & Rebecca R. Merril, The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything, 2006, Free Press

- Linda K. Stroh, Trust rules: How to Tell the Good Guys from the Bad Guys in Work and Life, 2007, Praeger

- Cam Caldwell, Leadership, Ethics, and Trust, 2018, Cambridge Scholars Publishing

[Episode 6]

[Episode 4]

Bahasa

Maple Leaf Stories: Election Fraud (4)

"At their 18th anniversary, husband and wife celebrate it in a fancy restaurant.

Husband: 'Darling, when I get mad at you, you never fight back. How do you control your anger?'

Wife: 'I clean the toilet.'

Husband: 'How does that help?'

Wife: 'I use your toothbrush.'"

"After voting in the voting booth, and after monitoring the results at the polling station, we then watched the 'Quick Count' on Media. If I asked 'Why is there a Quick Count?', you already knew the answer," said Maple while looking at a small area with curtains on three sides.

"The will of the people of a country—expressed in genuine, periodic elec­tions—is the basis of the authority of any democratic government. According to Melissa Estok [et al], this is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and every major international human rights instrument addressing civil and polit­ical rights, thereby creating treaty obligations and international commitments to this principle. The principle is also enshrined in modern constitutions around the world. Yet, the realization of this democratic precept too often proves elusive.

Many countries conduct democratic elections. Those who con­trol state institutions and resources or organized means of bribery and intimidation, however, too frequently try to manipulate election processes by denying opponents the right to stand for office; blocking them from organiz­ing themselves to campaign for votes; restricting their access to mass communications media; preventing the electorate from gaining the knowl­edge needed to make an informed political choice; intimidating the electorate from making a free political choice; and gerrymandering election districts to deny equal suffrage. When these tactics appear insufficient to ensure victory, such perpetrators of fraud often seek to manipulate election day processes by: blocking access to polling stations; denying qualified electors the right to cast ballots; arranging for illegal voting in their favor; stuffing ballot boxes; manip­ ulating vote counts; rigging vote tabulations; announcing fraudulent results; and blocking proper legal redress. Violence and political retribution also some­ times follow elections. Such developments deny government its demo­cratic mandate and set the stage for political instability.

Not every election requires a quick count, Estok wrote, at least not in its most comprehensive form. Moreover, quick counts only speak to election-day processes and say nothing in and of themselves about whether pre-election or post-election developments uphold or negate the democratic nature of an election. Quick counts are best understood as a critical element of compre­ hensive election monitoring, but they are unique in their impact and sometimes essential to determining the warranted degree of confidence in election results.

Most quick counts do not involve collecting information from every polling station; rather, data are gathered from a random statistical sample of polling stations. This allows groups to rapidly assemble and report data that are reliable and accurate within a very small margin of error.

An important note of caution must be emphasized. If the process is manipulated before the vote tabulation, a verification of the count's accuracy would legitimize the underlying fraud. For example, massive ballot box stuffing that took place in Nigeria's 1999 presidential election, or the likely misrepresenta­tion of votes as officials called out and recorded them in Belarus' 2001 presidential election, would not have been reflected in the tabulation of results recorded from such polling stations. For this reason, quick counts must also examine qualitative aspects of voting and counting processes.

Also, due to the exacting nature of quick counts and the high stakes they address, it is best not to conduct one unless an organization is and remains highly confident that it can execute the exercise successfully. It has been wise­ly decided in numerous countries not to conduct a quick count for these reasons, and in some cases, election monitoring organizations have decided near the end of the pre-election period not to attempt to make numeric pro­jections even though they had hoped to conduct a full quick count. Quick counts are politically neutral—but those conducting quick counts must take careful account of the political environment. The local political context either facilitates or impedes, quick count preparations and political considerations must come into play so that the impartiality and accuracy of the quick count remain beyond question.

A quick count, according Estok, is the process of collecting information gathered by hundreds, or thousands, of volunteers. All information, or data, comes from the direct observation of the election process. Observers watch the electoral authorities as they administer the voting process and count the ballots. They record infor­mation, including the actual vote count, on standardized forms and communicate their findings to a central collection point.

A quick count is not the same as political opinion research or exit polling. Quick counts do not rely on asking voters, or anyone else, how they might vote or require that voters divulge how they did vote. No opinions are expressed and none are requested from anyone.

Most quick counts have two components: an independent check on the official vote totals; and a systematic analysis of the qualitative aspects of an electoral process. Quick counts are used to monitor the vote as a rea­sonably straightforward arithmetic exercise.

Quick count history can be traced back to NAMFREL organizers, widely recognized as the pioneers of the quick count in emerging democracies. In the years since their first experience, quick counts have evolved, been thoroughly tested and now constitute a best practice for civil society oversight of the voting and tabulating processes.

In 1986 Philippines elections, the results reported by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos in 1984 were viewed with considerable distrust. When Marcos called a "snap" elec­tion for President in 1986, the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections |NAMFREL) initiated 'Operation Quick Count' as a comprehensive attempt to mirror the official count of all 90,000 polling stations. Unlike most subsequent quick counts, which collect information from a random statistical sample of polling stations, NAMFREL performed a remarkable task in collecting data on a majority of the polling stations. The organization was instrumental in helping uncover the massive vote counting fraud attempted by Marcos supporters.

A successful quick count begins with a clear understanding and statement of the project's goals. The most basic reason to undertake a quick count is to deter fraud. A quick count that is widely publicized and implemented by a credible organization or political party can deter or derail a fraudulent vote count.

To fulfill that deterrent function, a quick count must be well publicized and conducted in a transparent manner. The project must be promoted to raise awareness that electoral misconduct will be detected. The project's method­ ology should be understood and trusted. Plans should be publicized and open for scrutiny and debate, and written materials such as observer training man­ uals and forms should be distributed. For example: Chile, 1988. In the plebiscite determining whether to continue General Pinochet's presi­ dency, the Committee for Free Elections (CEL) used a statistically-based quick count to forecast the results from Chile's 22,000 polling stations. Based on a sample of 10 percent of the polling sites, CEL accurately forecasted the victo­ ry for anti-Pinochet forces. The quick count led to a statement by a member of the ruling junta conceding defeat. Experts speculate it was highly likely that the Pinochet regime would have manipulated the vote count to declare vic­ tory had there not been this independent verification of the count.

In cases where the quick count has been unable to deter fraud, the data should at a minimum be able to detect vote-counting fraud. More often, fraud is revealed when the results of the official tabulation process differ from a quick count's comprehensive results or statistical forecasts. For example, Panama, 1989, when it became apparent to Panamanian President Manuel Noriega that his proxy in the presidential contest was losing the vote, the government sus­ pended the the tabulation of results at the regional level and attempted to announce a fraudulent outcome. A Catholic Church organization, the Archdiocese Commission for the Coordination of Laity (a predecessor to the Commission for Justice and Peace), used its quick count (corroborated with a comprehensive count done by the political opposition) to forecast what the vote would have been had the ballots been properly and completely counted. This independent result demonstrated that Noriega's candidate, in fact, lost the election, which was a major factor in the weakening of the Noriega regime.

In transitional democracies, the official vote count often can take days, even weeks, to be publicly announced. Extended time lags between the completion of voting and the announcement of an official result may produce an uncer­ tain political climate or a political vacuum that threatens stability. An accurate, credible quick count can forecast returns in a timely fashion, help reduce post­ election tensions and increase citizens' confidence in the election outcome. Example: Indonesia, 1999. In the first truly free elections in Indonesia's history, the quick count conducted by the Indonesian Rector's Forum proved crucial. Indonesia's daunting phys­ ical geography and limited rural infrastructure resulted in a near collapse of the government's vote counting mechanisms. The only credible election results available for several weeks were those provided by the Rector's Forum quick count.

Most challenges to electoral processes are based on anecdotes. For example, one party may allege that its supporters were prevented from voting; in anoth­ er instance a party may present witnesses who claim that they were paid to vote for a certain candidate. Without documentation and analysis of the impact of such problems it is very difficult to obtain redress.

A quick count is designed to collect systematic and reliable information about qualitative aspects of the process. Opposition political parties and indepen­ dent monitors can supposedly rely on statistical methods used by quick counts to supply reliable and valid evidence about the voting and counting processes.

Quick count organizers mobilize hundreds, thousands, sometimes tens of thou­ sands of citizens. These are often individuals who are not interested in participating in partisan politics but still want to actively support the devel­ opment of a democratic political system. They serve as quick count trainers, observers, data processors and in other supporting roles. They become well versed in the country's electoral process and often stay involved in similar pro­ jects following elections.

Quick counts can set the stage for sponsoring groups to undertake non-elec­ toral democracy-building activities. Successful quick counts set a precedent for citizens affecting the political process. Civic organizations emerge from quick count experiences with reputations for honesty and effectiveness, and citizens want and expect them to continue similar work. These organizations are equipped to do so because organizing a quick count builds skills that can be employed in a wide variety of activities. In fact, many organizations for which a quick count was their first project have subsequently taken on pro­ grams to promote accountability and transparency in government, to educate citizens on the principles behind, and mechanics of, democracy and to advo­ cate for democratic reforms or specific policies.

As important a tactic as quick counts may be, this methodology is not a sub­ stitute for more comprehensive election monitoring. A quick count is one of numerous tools available to election monitors. By definition, a quick count focus­ es on the task of verifying that the ballots that go into a ballot box are counted accurately in the first instance and that these votes remain part of the final elec­ toral tally. If a ballot is placed in the box illegally, a quick count will count it as surely as a legal vote (unless ballot box stuffing is also detected.) If voters have been paid for their votes, the quick count will count these like any other vote. If voters have been intimidated into staying away from the polls or sup­ porting a party or candidate, the quick count will not report that problem. Thus, a quick count cannot act as a substitute for other more qualitative aspects of election monitoring.

Quick counts can project or verify official results, detect and report irregular­ ities or expose fraud. In the majority of cases, quick counts build confidence in the work of election officials and the legitimacy of the electoral process.

Although nearly every country in the world today holds multiparty elections, these contests are often blatantly unfair. For governments, electoral misconduct is a tempting but also a risky practice, because it represents a violation of international standards for free and fair elections.

An effective democratic society depends on the confidence citizens place in their government. Payment of taxes, acceptance of legislative and judicial decisions, compliance with social service programs, and support of military objectives are but some examples of the need for public cooperation with state demands. At the same time, voters expect their officials to behave ethically and responsibly.

Our regimes are democratic, but we are not governed demo­ cratically. This apparent paradox, says Pierre Rosanvallon, is at the root of the disenchant­ment and dismay that are so widely felt today. Our regimes are democratic in the sense that power comes from the ballot box at the end of an open competition, and that we live in a legally constituted state that recog­ nizes and protects individual liberties. To be sure, democracy has by no means been fully achieved. People often feel abandoned by their elected representatives; once the campaign is over, they discover that they are scarcely more sovereign than they were before. But this reality must not be allowed to mask another common phenomenon: bad government. Though it is still poorly understood, no one doubts its power to erode the foundations of our societies.

Political life is organized around institutions that, taken together, de fine a type of regime. But it is also bound up with governmental action, which is to say with the day-to-day management of state affairs, the authority to decide and command. It is where power—which in consti­tutional terms means executive power—is exercised. Politics affect people directly, every day of their lives. By the same token, the center of political gravity in democratic societies has imperceptibly shifted: until recently it was located in the relationship between representatives and those who are represented; now it is the relationship between governors and those who are governed that matters. This shift does not amount to a complete break with the past, however. The question of representation continues to occupy a prominent place in public discussion; indeed, one is forever being told that there is a 'crisis of representation' today. The chief failing of democracy in the minds of many is that their voice is not heard. They see their leaders making decisions without consultation, failing to take responsibility for their actions, lying with impunity, living in a bubble—in short, a government shut off from the world, a system whose workings are opaque.

Politics never used to be thought of in this way. Democracy has traditionally been understood as a kind of regime, very seldom as a specific mode of government. The fact that, historically, the words 'regime' and 'government' were used more or less synonymously is proof of this. Trust and goverment seems like contradictory.

In the next episode, we'll continue to discuss 'trust', bi 'idhnillah."

And before entering into the new fragment, Maple then sang,

Is there anybody out there?

Is there anybody left who cares?

All I wanna do is dance

Here in Wonderland *)

Citations & References:

- Melissa Estok, Neil Nevitte & Glenn Cowan, The Quick Count and Election Observation: An NDI Handbook for Civic Organizations and Political Parties, 2002, National Democratic Institute for International Affair

- Pierre Rosanvallon, Good Government: Democracy Beyond Elections, Translated by Malcolm DeBevoise, 2018, Harvard University Press

*) "Wonderland" written by Roxanne Emery, Sean Mcdonagh, Daniel Oestergaard & Dom Liu

[Episode 5]

[Episode 4]

Bahasa

Maple Leaf Stories: Election Fraud (3)

"A man walked into a bank to hold it up and gave the teller a note that read, 'This is a stickup. Give me all your money.'

She passed a note back to him that said, 'Pardon me sir, please fix your tie. We’re taking your picture.'"

"Why do in Democracy, we often talk about Equality?" Maple went on.

"Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity have been the motto of more than one Republic. It is indeed something more than a motto: the three doctrines of the Democratic creed. Civil or social liberty, says James Fitzpmes Stephen, is distinguished from ‘the so-called liberty of the will'. The expression originally meant protection against the tyranny of political rulers. Their power was recognized as a necessary evil, and its limitation either by privilege or by constitutional checks was what was meant by liberty. People came in time to regard their rulers rather as their agents and the depositaries of their power than as antagonistic powers to be kept in check, and it did not occur to them that their power exercised through their agents might be just as oppressive as the power of their rulers confined within closer or wider limits.

Fraternity implies love for someone—a desire to promote someone’s happiness. Everyone is interested in promoting this feeling in others even if he has it, not himself. The good of others becomes to him a thing naturally and necessarily to be attended to like any of the physical conditions of our existence.

Equality is at once the most emphatic and the least distinct of the doctrines of which that creed is composed. It may mean that all men should be equally subject to the laws which relate to all. It may mean that law should be impartially administered. It may mean that all the advantages of society, all that men have conquered from nature, should be thrown into one common stock, and equally divided amongst them. It may be, it is in a vast number of cases, nothing more than a vague expression of envy on the part of those who have not against those who have, and a vague aspiration towards a state of society in which there should be fewer contrasts than there are at present between one man’s lot and another’s. All this is so vague and unsatisfactory that it is difficult to reduce it to a form definite enough for discussion. It is impossible to argue against a sentiment other­ wise than by repeating commonplaces which are not likely to con­ vince those to whom they are addressed if they require convincing, and which are not needed by those who are convinced already.

There has been a long-term movement over the course of history toward more social, economic, and political equality. Nonetheless, at least since the end of the eighteenth century there has been a historical movement toward equality. The world of the early 2020s, no matter how unjust it may seem, is more egalitarian than that of 1950 or that of 1900, which were themselves in many respects more egalitarian than those of 1850 or 1780. The precise developments vary depending on the period. Over the long term, no matter which criterion we employ, we arrive at the same con- clusion. Between 1780 and 2020, we see developments tending toward greater equality of status, property, income, genders, and races within most regions and societies on the planet, and to a certain extent when we compare these societies on the global scale. If we adopt a global, multidimensional perspective on inequalities, we can see that, in sev- eral respects, this advance toward equality has also continued during the period from 1980 to 2020, which is more complex and mixed than is often thought.

Since the end of the eighteenth century, there has been a real, long-term tendency toward equality, but it is nonetheless limited in scope. Different inequalities have persisted at considerable and unjustified levels on all these dimensions—status, property, power, income, gender, origin, and so on—and, moreover, that individuals often face inequalities in combination.

Thomas Piketti suggests that human progress exists: the movement toward equality is a battle that can be won, but it is a battle whose outcome is uncertain, a fragile social and political process that is always ongoing and in question. At present, humanity is in better health than it has ever been; it also has more access to education and culture than ever before. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, hardly 10 percent of the world population over the age of fifteen could read and write, whereas today more than 85 percent is literate. In 1820, less than 10 percent of the world population, attended primary school; in 2020, more than half of the young generation in wealthy countries, attended a university.

On average, life expectancy at birth has risen worldwide, from about twenty-six years in 1820 to seventy-two years in 2020. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, about 20 percent of newborns on the planet died in the course of their first year, as com- pared with less than 1 percent today. If we concentrate on people who reached age one, life expectancy at birth has risen from about thirty-two years in 1820 to seventy-three years in 2020. Two centuries ago, only a small minority of the population could hope to live to be fifty or sixty years old; today, that privilege has become the norm. To be sure, this great leap forward merely shifted inequalities to another level.

As access to certain fundamental rights and goods (such as literacy or elementary health care) is gradually extended to the whole population, new inequalities appear at higher levels and require new responses. Like the quest for ideal democracy, which is nothing other than the march toward political equality, the march toward equality in all its forms (social, economic, educational, cultural, political) is an ongoing process that will never be completed.

Human population and average income have both multiplied more than tenfold since the eighteenth century. The former has risen from about 600 million in 1700 to more than 7.5 billion in 2020 while the latter, on the basis of the imperfect historical data regarding salaries and wages, production, and prices, has risen from an average purchasing power of less that 100 euros per month per inhabitant of the planet in the eighteenth century to about 1,000 euros per month per inhabitant at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Can these tenfold increases be described as human progress? The interpretation of these transformations is in reality far more complex than it is for health care and education. The spectacular growth of the world population reflects, of course, real improvement in the condi- tions of individuals’ lives, particularly thanks to advances in agricul- ture and food supply that have made it possible to escape from cycles of overpopulation and shortages. It also derives from the fall in in- fant mortality and from the fact that an increasing number of par- ents have been able to grow old with living children, which is not insignificant.

The general increase in population, production, and incomes since the eighteenth century took place at the price of overexploiting the planet’s natural resources, and to examine the sustainability of such a process and the institutional mechanisms that would make its radical reorientation possible.

We must be wary: the solution cannot be found only among purely environmental indicators, to the exclusion of socioeconomic indica- tors, including incomes. The reason for this is simple: human beings need to live in harmony with nature, but they also need housing, food, clothing, and access to culture. Above all, they need justice. Unless we are capable of measuring incomes, the inequality of their distri- bution, and their development over time, it is hard to see how we could develop norms of justice that would allow us to concentrate our ef- forts on the wealthiest people and rethink the organization of the global economic system in a way acceptable to the humblest. Without resolute action seeking to drastically compress socioeconomic in- equalities, there is no solution to the environmental and climatic crisis. To make progress in this direction, we must combine different indicators—environmental and economic, for example—and independently set targets for carbon emissions or biodiversity while at the same time formulating objectives that include the reduction of in- equalities in income and the distribution of fiscal and social deductions and public expenditures. In this way we may compare different sets of public policies that make it possible to achieve our environmental objectives.

Property and its distribution play an important role in our topic. Unlike income, which represents what one earns over a given period, property refers to everything one owns at a certain point in time. Like income, property is a social relationship, in the sense that it acquires its full meaning only within a particular society that is characterized by a set of rules and specific power relations between social groups. Property is a historically situated notion: it depends on the way each society defines the legitimate forms of ownership (land, houses, factories, machines, seas, mountains, monuments, financial assets, knowledge, slaves, and so on), as well as the legal procedures and practices that structure and delimit property relations and power relations among the social groups concerned.

In the Western world’s acquisition of wealth, slavery and colonialism played a central role. Today, the distribution of wealth among countries, as well as within them, is still deeply marked by this heritage. The development of Western industrial capitalism is closely linked to the international division of labor, the unrestrained exploitation of natural resources, and the military and colonial domination that developed gradually between the European powers and the rest of the planet starting in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and accelerating during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The exit from slavery and colonialism, a major step in the long march toward equality, involves conflicts and struggles, liberations and injustices. The slave revolt in Saint-Domingue in 1791 paved the way for the end of slavery and colonialism, but the battle for racial equality is still being fought. The same is true of inequalities in status in general: in 1789 the French Revolution took an essential step by abolishing the nobility’s privileges, but it did not do away with the multiple privi- leges of money—far from it.

The battle for equality is not over. It must be continued by pushing to its logical conclusion the movement toward the welfare state, progressive taxation, real equality, and the struggle against all kinds of discrimination. This battle also, and especially, involves a structural transformation of the global economic system. The end of colonialism has made it possible to begin a process of equalization, but the world- economy remains profoundly hierarchical and unequal in its workings.

The battle for equality will continue in the twenty-first century, basing itself chiefly on the memory of past struggles. If a historical move- ment toward more social, economic, and political equality has been possible over the last two centuries, that is above all thanks to a series of revolts, revolutions, and political movements of great scope. The same will be true in the future.

What then are the implications of this for alleged fraud in the 2024 election in Indonesia? Such fraud is contrary to Political Equality and Human Rights. A system as democratic to the extent that all members of society share equal fundamental political power. That democracy is good primarily because it works. Consider, by analogy, a hammer. We value hammers not as ends in themselves, but because they do a job. We would not insist on using an inferior hammer over a better hammer. We would not insist on using a hammer when we need a wrench.If the Indonesian people allow election fraud to continue to occur, then they will be left behind in the battle for social justice and equality, which the founding parents dreamed of for all Indonesian people.

We'll go again with in our discussion on next fragmen, bi 'idhnillah."

Then Maple was rhyming Linkin Park rapping,

All I know

Time is a valuable thing

Watch it fly by as the pendulum swings

Watch it count down to the end of the day

The clock ticks life away *)

Citations & References:

- James Fitzpmes Stephen, Liberty, equality, Fraternity, and Three Brief Essays, 1991, The University of Chicago

- Thomas Piketti, A Brief History of Equality, 2022, Harvard College

*) "In The End" written by Joseph Hahn, Brad Delson, Mike Shinoda, Robert G. Bourdon & Chester Charles Bennington

[Episode 4]

[Episode 2]

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