Prologue: Black Magic Without the Incense
In this country, Indonesia, a branch of the occult is taught at no Islamic boarding school. It appears on no university syllabus, yet a certain class of public officials practise it with great fluency: the art of vanishing. No incense is required, nor a cloak, nor seven days and seven nights of fasting. A single condition will do: make sure your name is mentioned in connection with a sting operation by the Corruption Eradication Commission, the KPK. The moment the news breaks, the body that only yesterday was cheerfully snipping the ribbon on a new bridge grows thin, fades, and slips out of view, as though the laws of gravity and the criminal code alike had been suspended for anyone of sufficient rank.
The public, meanwhile, settles into their seats as loyal viewers. No subscription is needed, and no ticket. Switch on the television or open a phone, and the most expensive soap opera in the republic streams for free, sponsored, as ever, by the taxpayer.
Motive: When Corruption Gets Promoted to a Genre
Every time the KPK carries out an OTT, the operasi tangkap tangan or ‘caught-red-handed operation’, the whole nation holds its breath and wonders who will land the lead role this time. The synopsis is almost always the same, yet somehow it never grows dull. There are billions of rupiah, laid out as neatly as a contemporary art exhibition. There are land disputes and construction projects worth enough to build a hundred schools, which somehow always end up as one very large house. There are building permits which, in other countries, are mere slips of paper, but which here carry a price, a tariff and, on occasion, a discount for loyal customers.
Corruption is no longer just a breach of the law. It has been promoted to a genre in its own right, complete with all the rules of dramatic construction: conflict, intrigue, witnesses who suddenly lose their memories and, of course, a twist around every corner. At first the money is said to be the proceeds of a business venture; then it becomes a deposit, then a loan, and by the final episode it is the winnings of an extended family’s savings circle, the arisan, which happened to amount to well over ten billion rupiah. Any scriptwriter would be green with envy at such creativity.
Episode 1: The Leading Man Vanishes from the Screen
The opening scene is always dramatic. Sirens, camera flashes, and the solemn phrase read out by the spokesperson: a caught-red-handed operation has been carried out. The public waits for the leading man’s face to appear on screen. But, like the celebrity guest star who is far too famous to turn up for filming, he is nowhere to be seen. His phone is switched off, his aide knows nothing, and his driver has just taken leave to visit his home village. He has not run away, his associates insist; he is simply not somewhere that can be found.
Episode 2: The Empty Chair, Best Supporting Actor
In the second episode the camera moves to the parliament building and lingers on the new star, the most reliable attendee of all: the empty chair. Meeting after meeting, it sits faithfully in the front row, its nameplate still proudly in place, as though its owner had just stepped out for a cup of coffee and never came back. The empty chair is the most disciplined employee in the land. It is never late, never dozes off in a session, never accepts an envelope, and never issues a statement that causes a stir. If every legislator were as good as it is, the republic might have been clean long ago.
Behind the comedy, however, the empty chair carries a bitter meaning. It is a small monument to accountability, which left without saying goodbye. Every nameplate sitting idle in front of a vacant seat is like a headstone that has not yet been given a date.
Episode 3: The Official Returns, Armed with a Familiar Excuse
After a while, the official reappears, naturally with an announcement full of pathos. The excuse is astonishing only because we already know the whole list by heart. He was at prayer, and who would dare challenge a man in communion with God? He had another engagement of great importance which, regrettably, cannot be explained. Or he was suddenly taken ill, with some mysterious ailment that clears up miraculously just as the meeting ends. The public is invited to believe, and if it does not believe, the public is invited to keep quiet.
At this point the audience is treated like a small child told to swallow its vegetables without asking why. We are asked to believe that coincidence can strike again and again with the regularity of a railway timetable; that whenever a case comes to light there is always some urgent act of worship, some sudden illness, some appointment that simply cannot be moved.
Episode 4: A Cliffhanger Ending, as Usual
A good soap opera always closes its season on a cliffhanger, and the producers of this country know the rule well. Has the official truly vanished, or is he merely hiding in the thick undergrowth of bureaucratic jargon? Perhaps he is sheltering behind such magic phrases as ‘we respect the legal process’, ‘we await the official statement’, or ‘that is a matter for another party’. Those sentences work far better than any invisibility cloak in a wizarding novel. The audience is told to wait for the next season, and then the season after that, until it has forgotten who it was looking for in the first place.
The Bureaucratic Djinn: Present for the Signature, Gone for the Accountability
To be honest, our officials are in fact highly skilled djinns, though of a particular kind: the bureaucratic djinn. Its pattern of appearances is consistent and entirely predictable. It materialises in a crisply pressed safari suit at every groundbreaking ceremony, at every group photograph and, above all, at every signing of a project contract whose value leaves the calculator short of zeros. On such occasions it is present one hundred per cent, arriving early and leaving late. But when the time comes to explain where the money went, its body evaporates once more, leaving behind only the scent of expensive cologne in the meeting room.
The irony is that a genuine djinn is at least honest about its nature. It never pretends to be a human being who has promised to serve the people. The bureaucratic djinn takes its oath of office with one hand on the holy book, and then disappears with the very same hand.
More depressing still, the evidence turns out to be far easier to find than its owner. Piles of seized cash are displayed neatly in front of the cameras, photographed from every angle, counted again and again in front of the reporters. It is so real, so solid and so famous that we are left wondering who, exactly, is the ghost in this story. The money exists; it can be touched, counted, and entered into the case file. It is the owner who cannot be seen, heard or reached. In this country, it seems, a pile of banknotes may appear on the front page before the man who will admit to owning it.
Epilogue: What Has Vanished Is Not the Djinn but the Shame
So let us set one thing straight: the official who vanishes is not a djinn. A djinn needs no state-funded car, no entourage of aides, and no political party ready to close ranks around him. The official who disappears from the screen is simply an ordinary human being who knows perfectly well that the system around him is hospitable enough to let him disappear. He can vanish because the legal process crawls along at the pace of a tortoise in judicial robes; because there is a culture that treats corruption as an occupational hazard; because the circles of power are busier protecting their friends than protecting public trust; and because we, the public, are too quick to look away the moment a new show comes on.
In other words, the empty chair is not merely a mirror held up to the official; it is a mirror held up to all of us. It reflects the face of a system so accustomed to repeating the same script that it has forgotten this is not a soap opera. This is the pothole-ridden road, the leaking school roof and the clinic that has run out of medicine, whose funding vanished along with the leading man.
The question we ought to be asking is no longer ‘where has the official gone?’ but ‘who let him go, and why are we still watching?’ Until an answer is sought, this drama will run on, season after season, with the empty chair patiently waiting and the audience quietly paying the entire cost of production.
Note: This essay is a work of satire that draws attention to general patterns and phenomena; it does not accuse any particular individual. Everyone remains entitled to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law.
