"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 andpolicies 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 aloneSing, "Hello world, it feels so good to be home"Hello, hello, hello worldI 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
