Ilmiah (Educated)
Everyone seems obsessed with being considered ‘educated’. When one is known to be ‘educated’, his words are considered as a truth, and no one needs argue.
“That’s why when you want to be a leader or politician ― other than being rich and mature ― you have to be able to create an impression that you are an educated person,” says I Made Kucing Dalam Karung (I Madé Check Carefully Before You Buy).
Everybody smiles. They all look happy because there are many ceremonies and celebrations these days which mean that they have ‘excuses’ to drink and gamble as often as they like. Along with the ceremonies and celebrations, there will be also general elections to choose mayors. And everybody knows it involves such a huge budget in spite of unsatisfying results.
“To be able to be seen to be ‘educated’, all you have to do is to include some academic titles after your name. As the titles come from a university, people will respect you as an educated person,” Made continues.
That’s why every candidate tries to include academic titles — as many as possible in front and behind their names. No matter how thick their moustaches are, how sweet their smile is, and how protruding their headdresses are, there will be something missing if they don’t include their academic titles. Various academic titles will be included from under-graduate, graduate, post graduate, Ph.D, even Professor, Mr.
“One even has 4 titles: I wonder how hard he studies? Perhaps, all he does day and night is just attend lectures. If so, when do they have time for the people anyway?” thinks Made.
“You are too naïve, Made. Don’t you know that the tittles they have are not obtained by studying hard? You know, even a doctor has been caught doing plagiarism, not to mention undergraduate and graduate students. In addition there are many universities where you can get your degree just by paying some money without having to attend lectures. You can have any academic titles that you like as long as you can pay,” says I Ketut Politik Aji Ugig (I Ketut Dirty Politician).
As a matter of fact, academic titles sometimes are not enough. You need to give speech as often as you can, and when you do, you must use big words or academic terms during your speech, just like the mayor candidates. They like using terms such as ‘equality of gender’, bureaucracy reformation, clean governance, good governance, community-based …..etc., etc. Someone who is just a drop out from elementary school will completely not understand. But an educated person will just smile when he hears such speech as he knows it is all full of bullshit.
For each candidate who joins the general election, other than academic titles and capability to hold speech properly, he also needs to have someone do a survey in order to find out how popular he is.
“The problem is that the survey is carried out by his friends while the respondents are his supporters. They try to make the survey process simple. As the survey is done by his friends, of course the results indicate that he is very popular.
When you can buy academic titles, your speech is full of bullshit and the survey result is fake ― how do you expect an honest leader?
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Taken from ‘Bungklang Bungkling’, ‘Ilmiah’, a column by I Wayan Juniartha,
as published in Bali Post, Sunday, 14th March 2010.
Translated by Putu SemiadaTaken.
