Rindu di Tengah Hujan

 HUJAN DI BULAN JUNI
Tak ada yang lebih tabah
Dari hujan di bulan juni
Dirahasiakannya rintik rindunya
Kepada pohon yang berbunga itu
Tak ada yang lebih bijak
Dari hujan bulan juni
Dihapusnya jejak-jejak kakinya
Yang ragu-ragu di jalan itu
Tak ada yang lebih arif
Dari hujan bulan juni
Dibiarkannya yang tak terucapkan
Diserap akar pohon bunga itu

Sapardi Djoko Damono, 1989

Canberra dibasahi hujan di akhir musim gugur © 2014 Dini Suryani

Mendung menggantung sejak pagi di langit Canberra. Tak kudengar suara hujan, tiba-tiba kulihat keluar jendela jalanan sudah basah. Mungkin langit Canberra tahu ini adalah saat yang tepat untuk merayakan kerinduan pada orang-orang terkasih yang sekarang tidak (atau belum) bisa ditemui.

Mungkin itu pula yang dirasakan hujan dalam Hujan di Bulan Juni milik Sapardi. Dia memilih untuk merahasiakan rasa rindu. Baginya mungkin sebaiknya rindu tidak ditampakkan, karena menampakkan rindu tak selalu menjadi sebaik-baiknya pilihan. Aku hanya bisa berharap semoga ia tetap tabah, seperti yang sudah-sudah.

***

Bagi perantau seperti aku, rindu layaknya oksigen yang dihirup paru-paru. Sebuah keharusan dan keniscayaan. Kurang rindu perantau lemah. Tak ada rindu perantau mati.

Meski sekarang hati perantau telah porak poranda disiksa rindu, namun rindu itu pula yang membuat perantau bertahan, menanti dengan tegar akan datangnya hari pertemuan.

Sayang, pekan depan aku pulang. 

Canberra, 1 Juni 2014

The Story of "Little People" in Indonesian Elections

*Tulisan ini dimuat juga di website The Indonesianists pada tanggal 24 Mei 2014.

Legislative election has been recently completed. Political elites are now busily preparing themselves for the presidential election this July. While all eyes stick to the presidential election, this article is about to tell that democracy is not only belong to the elites, but also involved “little people” and one of the is Kelompok Penyelenggara Pemungutan Suara (KPPS) or voting organizer group. KPPS have crucial role to determine whether the election become a success.

KPPS could be seen as key actors in “street level” politics in Indonesian electoral system, besides large institutions such as Komisi Pemilihan Umum (KPU) and political parties at the higher level. Their presence is essential to determine the integrity of the election as whole, because votes in general election calculated from each Tempat Pemungutan Suara (TPS) or polling stations that run by KPPS.

Tracing back the history of election in Indonesia, we could learn that the use of ad-hoc groups for organizing elections at the lowest level had been the case since the first election in 1955. Herbert Feith (1999) notes that the 1955 election was organized at the grassroots by Panitia Penyelenggara Pemungutan Suara (PPPS) or the voting organizing committee, which consisted of 15 people for each Tempat Pemungutan Suara (TPS) or polling station. This committee consisted mainly ofvillage officials which were assisted by 3-5 persons known as Pembantu Keamanan Pemungutan Suara (PKPS) or voting security assistants. Interestingly, different from the current election, members of PPPS and PKPS could come from political parties. Although some PPPS and PKPS members were also members of political parties, they were able to demonstrate independent attitude, which resulted in the high degree of fairness and freedom of the 1955 election.

In the New Order, the organizing group for election at the lowest level also called KPPS since its first election in 1971, the same name as today. In carrying out elections, William Liddle (1992) mentioned that the New Order government manipulated all of the election institutions, including KPPS, to win Golkar. A study by Irwan and Adriana in 1995 found more than 82.5 per cent (510 of 618 cases) electoral fraud was committed by member of KPPS (Hidayat 2003). Instead of being resulted from KPPS’ own willingness to support Golkar, the fraud was allegedly caused by the threat of army soldiers who were assigned to monitor election at the village level. Members of KPPS in New Order could be interrogated by the army just because they were joking for not support Golkar.

Photo 1. President Suharto visited a TPS in Jakarta in 1971 Election (Source: Arsip Nasional RI)

What about KPPS since Reformasi era, specifically during the 2014 election? According to KPU Decree No 3/2013, the KPPS consists of seven persons from the community who manage elections in each TPS. KPPS members are assisted by two other people also from the community who serve as security officers in TPS. These people should be non-partisan. KPPS members derived from the names suggested by village officials. This membership mechanism is actually problematic because providing large authority to village officials in appointing KPPS members can provide some opportunity for nepotism. There were 545,803 TPS in the 2014 legislative election, which means that more than 3 million Indonesians were involved as KPPS in the election throughout the country. Their duties are among others, to execute voting and vote counting at polling stations, to secure the integrity of the ballot boxes after the vote count and after the ballot boxes sealed and to fill in recapitulation reports of vote counting results. These are not easy tasks and very time consuming.

Mardirahardjo (65), father of my colleague, Septi, is one of the members of KPPS in TPS 21 RW 17, Prawirodirjan, Gondomanan sub-district, Yogyakarta. He went home at 06.00 am on Thursday (10/4), after working since 7am the previous day. His TPS is a big one (433 voters, where there is a cap on 500 per TPS) Moreover, because of the open list system, the task of counting votes has become more arduous as members have to count the votes for political party as well as votes for candidates from each party. Since the day of election, Mardirahardjo suffered from a respiratory problem due to fatigue. In West Sumatera, Lampung and Bengkulu some KPPS members died allegedly due to the exhaustion of vote counting (Antaranews.com 10/4).

KPPS members get paid for their service, but it is only around Rp 300,000- Rp 450,000 for work that requires weeks of commitment. In Nunukan of North Kalimantan, KPPS members withdrew from their duties in protest at the small wage they received. In Ende of East Nusa Tenggara province, KPPS members held the ballot boxes hostage as they waited for the payment of their honorariums from the KPU (Tribunnews.com 30/3). Despite those incicents, most KPPS members are not concerned about this small fee and seeing it as a form of service to the country.

With that low honorarium, many committees have taken on the initiative to encourage citizens to vote. In Bandung and other places, KPPS members dressed up and built unique structures of the TPS to attract people to exercise their voting rights. Most of these KPPS raised the funds from the community themselves as the KPU only provided Rp 750,000 (around US $ 75) per TPS.

Photo 2. Chinese-costumed KPPS members in one of TPS in Bandung (Source: detik.com)

Unfortunately, some members of KPPS were committed election fraud . Since KPPS members had direct access to ballots and votes recapitulation report, KPPS membership is prone to misuse. In Maluku and South Sumatra Provinces, the Election Monitoring Agency (Bawaslu) uncovered fraud and recommended a re-vote. The fraud usually related to the manipulation of voting resuts to one party or legislative candidate in a TPS. In a polling station in Boyolali of Central Java Provice for instance, 70 per cent of the ballots was allegedly manipulated by the KPPS members. In addition, the villagers were also intimidated by village officials and one member of KPPS to give their votes to a candidate from Partai Demokrat (Solopos.com 17/4). As retaliation, KPPS members who were “helpful” to manipulate the votes, got some money from the party or candidate.

Regardless of the frauds committed by some KPPS members, the active involvement of citizens in the election portrayed a clear picture that the Indonesian democracy is not only run by the political elites. KPPS, which is the lowest level of election apparatus, have played important role in determining the quality of election. They carried out difficult and complex election procedures, with huge risk and small compensation. In future, there should be more appreciation to these “little people”, who are undoubtedly significant democratic players. Honorarium reward to them must be adjusted in order to “professionalize” KPPS. More broadly, the high quality of election requires more modern and mature procedure. Without significant revitalization of election system and procedure, we cannot hope for more clean, free and fair election.

Dini Suryani
A Master of Asia-Pacific Studies student at the Australian National University

Jarak

Terkadang jarak terasa begitu menyakitkan. 

Rumah

Berapa gelintir dari manusia di muka bumi ini menghabiskan waktu berkeliling dunia hanya untuk mencari ‘rumah’?

Mungkin sepuluh. Seratus. Satu juta. Sepuluh juta.

Mungkin salah satu di antaranya adalah kamu?

Rumah macam apa sesungguhnya yang kamu cari itu, yang membuatmu menghabiskan hampir seperempat usia hidup?

Bisa jadi rumah megah. Bisa pula hanya sebuah pondok sederhana.

Bisa pula hanya beralaskan rumput, beratapkan langit.

Dunia ini telah menuntut banyak hal dari dirimu. Mengharuskanmu menjadi ini dan itu. Kau turuti susah payah. Kadang sekedar berpeluh, sesekali penuh darah.

Rumah selalu berhasil membuatmu menanggalkan sejenak ke(pura-pura)perkasaan yang sudah sekian lama kau taruh di pundak. Merenggangkan otot-otot ego. Melepaskan hati yang sedari tadi gulana.

Di rumah, kau kembali menjadi dirimu. Tidak ingin menjadi ini dan itu. Hanya menjadi dirimu. Menikmati waktu yang semakin pendek.  Dan menikmati butiran air mata yang tak pernah kau jatuhkan di dunia luar sana.
Maka wajar bagi sepuluh, seratus, satu juta, sepuluh juta manusia bertekad menemukan rumahnya masing-masing. 

My home is you (Source: watcha-ahc.tumblr.com)

Dan dengan gembira aku umumkan, aku sudah menemukan rumah itu. Rumah yang selalu bisa aku pulangi tanpa merasa bosan melihat airmataku, dan tanpa mengkritisi kelemahanku. Rumah yang selalu kurindukan untuk kupulangi, karena ia telah menerima apa adanya diriku, sebelum aku menerima apa adanya diriku sendiri.

Bagi sepuluh, seratus, satu juta, sepuluh juta yang belum, teruslah mencari. Kau pasti menemukannya.  

Melupakan untuk Mengingat

Kau selalu merasa bahwa mudah lupa adalah sebuah kelebihan. Secara tidak sengaja kau lupa pada hal-hal yang memang sudah semestinya tak perlu kau ingat. Lalu menjadikan hal itu tak berkesan di matamu. Tak ada artinya di hatimu.

Tapi di tengah kemudahan lupa, kau harus tetap ingat, bahwa ingatan memiliki aturannya sendiri. Dengan egoisnya dia bisa juga memilih kenangan dan peristiwa masa lalu untuk diingat dengan intepretasinya sendiri, tanpa mau berkompromi denganmu. Ia melupakan hal yang ingin kau ingat, dan mengingat hal yang ingin kau lupakan.

Dan meskipun kau betul-betul mudah lupa, kau sering lengah. Bahwa melupakan bukan berarti hilang ingatan. Selalu saja ada serpihan kenangan tinggal di sudut-sudut kepala. Selalu saja ada potongan masa lalu yang menolak beranjak dari lapis terdalam perasaan. Di sela-sela perjalananmu, serpihan kenangan dan potongan masa lalu seringkali mampir tanpa mempertimbangkan situasi hati.

Dalam persinggahan kenangan dan masa lalu itu, terkadang kau tak merasa apa-apa. Tapi tak jarang serpihan dan potongan itu memaksamu berhenti berjalan, entah lama, entah sebentar. Membuatmu berpikir keras, haruskah kau terus berjalan ke depan, atau berbalik arah dan mengambil satu persatu serpihan juga kenangan yang sebetulnya kau ingin kubur dalam-dalam. Mengambilnya untuk membuangnya ke tempat yang seharusnya. Atau bisa juga mengambilnya untuk kembali menyimpannya.

Kau merasa kenangan dan masa lalu itu terus menyakitimu. Mengobrak-abrik hatimu. Menggarami lukamu yang menganga. Lalu kau memutuskan untuk menyerah. Kau memasrahkan semuanya pada ingatanmu yang egois itu.

Di tengah-tengah kepasrahanmu, perlahan kau menyadari, bahwa kenangan dan masa lalu itu bagian dari dirimu. Merekalah yang mengukir jiwamu. Menempa hatimu. Mengokohkan perasaanmu. Membentuk dirimu.

Kemudian kau memutuskan untuk berjalan ke depan. Tetapi dengan menggenggam kenangan di tangan kiri dan mendekap masa lalu di tangan kanan. Airmata yang sejak tadi kau kendalikan, kali ini tidak bisa menahan dirinya untuk merayakan kepasrahan ini bersamamu.

Tapi kau yakin itu bukanlah kesedihan. Itu adalah keberanian.

Forget to Remember (Source: sportsgeezer.com)