3 Comments on “Pragmatic Politics”

1. Putu Alberto Lee Says:
   July 31st, 2007 at 12:42 am

   PKS is doing the “right thing”: get big, get the majority of the votes (no matter how — rob, steal, corruption, etc.), while pushing the “islamic syariah” along the way.

   Everybody’s happy: people (PKS voters) have the “secure-feeling” of living by “god’s law”, and the guys in pks (+some clerics) enjoy the power (and money, of course).

   Is this news?

   Especially in a “moral society” like Indonesia (or maybe southeast asia in general), people will look up to you if you look “moral and religious”.

   That’s not very difficult: show up in “religious events”, stick to the “norms”, appear to be “family oriented”, stay a bit to the right of the center (that means: scream out loud and say no to “weird things” such as: sex education for school kids, gay civil rights, legalization of abortion, you know, those things that “annoys” people’s sense of “morality”), etc.

   So no matter whatever real evil deed you commit (corrupt, steal, etc, etc), people will ignore it all. It’s very easy.

   Appearance matters; much more than anything else.

2. Djoko Says:
   July 31st, 2007 at 9:42 am

   Well what can you do? If you promote any form of syariah (even the ’syariah-lite’ version from PKS) you are shouted down as being religious psycopaths. If you decide to change and become more open in your direction and policies, you get shouted down as being inconsistent.

   Who would want to be an Islamic party?

3. Ihaknt Says:
   July 31st, 2007 at 1:58 pm

   See, in the end it’s about power. These people can’t resist the lure of power and the ‘good things’ it offers, well for now anyway.

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