Is SBY A Thief or A Buffalo?

In a case of Indonesian democracy in action, the President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), has decided that he needs to put together a working group to, in part, examine the conduct of demonstrators. The working group is ostensibly tasked with looking at matters related to law enforcement, security, bureaucratic reform, and democracy. Seemingly this includes whether or not there is a code of ethics and conduct that demonstrators must subscribe to if they want to protest. The president is concerned that some recent protests have breached the 'code' and even the law.

The protests that the president is particularly referring to are those related to the ongoing Bank Century shenanigans, particularly those ones where protesters / demonstrators using loud speakers yell at the top of their lungs that the president is a thief. Or even more recently where the second term president has been likened to a buffalo (he doesn't look like a buffalo to me). In the mind of SBY buffaloes are fat and lazy. Now, that is a bad rap for the buffaloes because they work pretty hard in the fields and do their work without too many complaints. In fact, they work for food. In contrast, the president has put on a few pounds since becoming president and his 100-day agenda for his second, legacy building, term has been a bust. So, a bad rap for the buffaloes.

The problem is that the demonstrators scarper after the event and the authorities cannot track them down, presumably to prosecute them for being so rude as to liken the president to a buffalo or call him 'Mr. Light Fingers'. I am not sure why the authorities could not simply arrest the protesters before they scarper at the end of the protest if the president is really concerned that the protesters are going to far in their criticisms of him.

It appears that the president does not consider either accusation within the parameters of freedom of speech or freedom of expression. It, further, appears that the president wants to put a stop to this unwelcome behaviour before it gets truly out of hand.

The reality here is that this is a non-issue. The president has serious problems confronting his nation that are obviously beyond the scope and ability of the current cabinet he has assembled and his coalition of the willing to resolve, or in the first instance, and even address. Nevertheless, the president has characterized this issue as one that is so important that it goes to the heart of saving Indonesian culture, democracy, and civilization! Are you serious, Mr. President?

Rather than worry about whether people think he is a thief or a buffalo, it is perhaps a good time to actually do some work and solve some problems. Then, perhaps, the people will start to see SBY as the saviour that they once thought him to be. But, no, the president is just another politician looking to pass the buck and cast the blame onto some other poor unfortunate soul with neither the money nor the time to defend themselves.

It is time that the fella started doing what he was elected to do, be the president. It is time for some presidential leadership to come to the fore and fulfill the promise of making Indonesia better than it has ever been before. The people are ready and willing, are you Mr. President?

Viva Indonesia!

Logical Fallacies...

1. The best place for a child to live is with his or her biological parents.

2. Unless gays are banned from the military, no heterosexual military personnel will be safe.

3. Making condoms available in high school is like giving a thief a license to steal.

4. His repeated failure to find a job indicates that he lacks ambition.

5. Either you support anti-abortion legislation, or you're not Christian.

Just a few logical fallacies as thought provokers. Adapted from the Prentice Hall Handbook for Writers (1995).

Gypsies -- Roma

This is one of those moments where you read the sentence, shake your head, read it again, and then go, what?

Italy's highest court, the Court of Cassation, has handed down a decision which essentially says that it is OK to discriminate against gypsies because they are all thieves. Hey, did I fall asleep and wake up in the dark ages?

Italy is now governed again by the billionaire telecommunications expert and alleged corrupter Silvio Berlusconi. However, it is the Interior Minister who has decided that all of the Roma that are resident in Italy must be fingerprinted, including all Roma children.

The ruling was not about the fingerprinting issue per se but rather it overturned the convictions of a group of six people who signed a pamphlet which essentially said that all gypsies must be removed from Italy because where ever there are gypsies there are robberies. One of the six, Flavio Tosi, has since become Mayor of Verona.

The fact that the Court made the decision that it did would suggest that any legal action taken against the fingerprinting measure would be likely to fail as the Court appears inclined to accept the proposition that all Roma are thieves.

The Court of Cassation held that Mr Tosi was not a racist, but that he had "a deep aversion [to Roma] that was not determined by the Gypsy nature of the people discriminated against, but by the fact that all the gypsies were thieves". The Court then went on to say that his dislike of the Roma was "not therefore based on a notion of superiority or racial hatred, but on racial prejudice".

Yep, if you're lost a little on this reasoning then join the queue. This seems to be an exercise in hair splitting between the words hatred and prejudice.

It should not be too long and the government in Italy might require Italian Jews to wear a big yellow Star of David on their clothes. If Italians are going to start fingerprinting people then it must be non-discriminatory and all Italians must be fingerprinted and not just selected racial groups.