Oath

Taken from ‘Bungklang Bungkling’, ‘Sumpah’, in Bali Post, Sunday, 4 January, 2009, a column by I Wayan Juniartha
Translated by Putu Semiada

As the world is getting older, the more people commit oath.

Once Gajah mada, the prime minister of Majapahit committed an oath called ‘Sumpah Palapa’ in which he wanted to unite the Indonesian (Nusantara) islands. He achieved his goal.

But now, East Timor has gone, Aceh is more like Arabic country, Papua wants to be independent form Indonesia, the Palapa satellite has been owned by Singapore. The ‘Nusantara’ has been in decay. But as we can see no high ranking official dare to take an oath to improve the situation. They are going abroad for holiday and they are competing in buying new cars instead.

The officials take an oath of office. However, as a matter of fact, they don’t really commit to the oath as they think the witness is only the God. Nowdays nobody is afraid of God. They are more afraid of Ida Betara Dalem (the God of Death).

They think that the God live somewhere very far. The Balinese haven’t found any trancee talking about the God (Ida Sang Hyang Widhi). The Balinese are more afraid of the ground spirits.

That’s why the officials dare to brake oath. They take oath not to accept bribe, nor gift but the fact is that they won’t do their job properly if they don’t get something from it (they ask you for cash, cigarettes, or even percentage (of a project). They swear to serve the people, but the fat is that the act like a king.

There is a kind of oath which called ‘Sumpah Cor’. This kind of oath is carried out to solve problem such as when a klian (head of Banjar) ‘steal’ the banjar community’s money, when a boy is not responsible after making a girl pregnant, or when one borrows something from somebody but at the end does not want to return what he borrows.

But now days’ this kind of oath is no longer popular. They prefer to use lawyer service. They think it is easier to ‘cheat’ judges than gods.

However, the most popular oath today is political oath. The people who do this oath are government official, the pensioners who want to have political power, legislative nominees and political leaders.

This is the easiest oath. No need witness at all. No need legal documents. They say, “ I swear to improve the people’s standard of living”, “I will fight for the preservation of Balinese culture”. But what they say was just like television commercial breaks. The question is who will give them punishment if they do not act as what they have said..

So, this is a kind of cheap thing. As a matter of fact, it’s their supporters who take the oath, not them. Their supporters sound stupid. They do that only for Rp.100.000, a cheap t-shirt, and a packed lunch. They take the oath in the name of God to be loyal to the legislative nominee.

But when everything is not like what the expected, the oath would chance to curse. The victims of political situations will curse their leaders. They will curse that the corrupt leaders must die soon or to suffer from deseases such as diabetes.
The world seems getting worse and worse. The more people take oath, the more we can trust anybody..