If all civil servants no longer flaunt their wealth, is the problem solved? What is questioned by some circles is not the display of wealth, but the legitimacy of officials’ riches.
By
Ariel Heryanto
·6 minutes read
SALOMO TOBING
Ariel Heryanto
What is the most serious aspect, as yet overlooked, in the controversy about the luxury lifestyles of some officials? It is not their lavish wealth or the legitimacy of the wealth. It is not their profession as civil servants or ASN. Instead, it is this: can flaunting wealth be avoided? Is it necessary to condemn the behavior?
The President and the Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Minister (PAN-RB) have prohibited civil servants from showing off their extravagant wealth. The prohibition is natural if civil servants display their luxury when they perform office duties. Yet civil servants have private lives outside their timetables and places of work. So do their families. Should their private lifestyles be regulated by the state?
If all civil servants no longer flaunt their wealth, is the problem solved? If civil servants retire, are they free from flaunting luxury? What about the right of non-civil servants in the country to adopt such lifestyles?
What is questioned by some circles is not the display of wealth, but the legitimacy of officials’ riches. If the matter were so simple, the problem would be over when no scam was proven to exist behind their lavish wealth. Even if any fraud is found out, will everything be settled after the perpetrators are appropriately punished? In the language of the New Order, are they just oknum (rogue individuals)?
There are two basic and more serious issues compared with what has so far been outstanding in the debate about luxury showoff. First, is it possible for people to become superrich without any desire to flaunt extravagance? Is the display of luxury lifestyles to be condemned, regardless of who the persons are, what their professions may be or how the riches for such lifestyles are gained? If not, why?
What is questioned by some circles is not the display of wealth, but the legitimacy of officials’ riches.
Second, the opportunity for extravagant living is not equal. Social history is a history of disparity. A small number of people live in luxury for generations without hard work. Others work in various fields and locations shunned by fellow residents for being hazardous, contemptible or difficult. They remain poor for generations.
Both issues need to be examined one by one. Usually, people show off luxury to be admired. But the intention can also invite public ridicule. It is the risk to be borne by the boasters. Choice of lifestyle remains an individual right. There is no need to be antagonistic toward them, let alone forbidding them from doing so. Those who do not like it can just ignore it.
Flaunting luxury is very human. Everyone has the desire to show off oneself or one’s surrounding life. What is displayed is not always extravagance. Luxury standards are not the same for different circles either. The human instinct to show off is one of the keys to the success of the social media industry.
Many people are addicted to social media interactions. Rather than being addicted to digital technology, they relish the pleasure of flaunting their personal ins and outs through the technology. This addiction has affected various circles from diverse economic, ethnic, age, religious, linguistic and professional backgrounds.
In capitalist society, now already worldwide, everybody is encouraged to work hard and live in prosperity. The public is also urged to consume on a large scale in order to induce economic growth. Some refer to prosperity as the fruit of development. Others feel grateful for it as the blessing of God. Instead of being banned, extravagance is even celebrated in advertisements, entertainment programs, official family customs and institutional ceremonies.
What is the purpose of being rich if forbidden to live in luxury? This feeling may be cherished by billionaires or those dreaming of becoming superrich. The problem is not everyone is capable of becoming rich in spite of being desirous of it. The consequences are serious. So, the second basic issue, disparity, needs further examination.
There are no stashes of wealth from individual efforts. Lavish wealth comes from a winding process in a social system. Unfortunately, our social system is very unequal from local to global levels. The rich are getting wealthier. Their number is increasingly smaller. Tracing it to the source, their wealth flows swiftly from the perspiration, tears and even lives of poor people, whose numbers are swelling.
Inequality is inevitable due to the functioning of an unfair social system. It is not because of corrupt officials. The social system is super-corrupt. The more obedient all citizens to rules and the harder they work, the wider the disparity will be. This is because the rules and the law are on the side of the elite.
Our society is marked by disparity in prosperity and income level. There is a conflict of interest between income levels, each with a different identity. Social figures are often hard to recognize due to being coated or entangled with religious, racial, ethnic, gendered or national identities.
The upper-income level supremacy is only maintained if they manage to control not only the law or the economy; they also have to control the cultural predilections of society. That is why former kings appointed men of letters of their courts. Today, presidents promote influencers.
Class identities are represented in various forms, including lifestyles. Luxury lifestyles function to confirm the collective identities of fellow upper-class members. At the same time, they function to keep a distance from people at low- and middle-income levels, who are only left to crave a status promotion to the upper-income level someday.
The public uproar over the display of extravagance lately indicates the failure of people in the upper-income level to control the liking, culture and morality of the public. There is a burst of frustration from the middle-income levels, helplessly caught between the upper- and lower-income levels. This phenomenon has occurred repeatedly in history.
In the colonial era, the government sought to absorb public frustration with the ethical policy, instead of ending colonialism. In the New Order period, there were explosions of the newly rich and the urban poor. Panicked by the phenomenon referred to as “social envy”, the government adopted the “modest living” policy that from the beginning would predictably fail. Now, for the relief of public anxiety, the government has dismissed “rogue” officials as antidotes.
In the 1990s, conglomerate figures and New Order officials were thronging to read poetry in public spaces. They pretended to be cultured to attract sympathy. Now new cosmetics are available to make up the elite’s prosperity to avoid public spotlighting, by appearing in a religious style. Social disparity has thus escaped public notice.
ARIEL HERYANTO, Professor Emeritus at Monash University, Australia
