What's at stake in the postponing of Veloso's execution?

Have no illusions. While a small celebration may be called for, Veloso is still on death row.

The polemics surrounding this matter are interesting. On the one hand, the hashtag #Thanks2Jokowi is trending. What cannot but strike the eye is the desperation in this sentiment — why say thanks to someone who should have done far more, far earlier? Is it not like thanking a mugger for returning your belongings?

On the other, the media is quick to polemicise: “Does this action stain Indonesia’s sovereignty in regard to how other nations can influence our decisions?” 

There is hardly a more miserable question than this: How insecure does a nation have to be, if legal cooperation and agreement with another nation is painted as overstepping the boundaries of its sovereignty?

Put the two sentiments side by side, though, and a strange image begins to appear: We must thank Jokowi, because finally, we have touched his heart and he became willing to risk national sovereignty to save the life of a woman. Or, conversely: We must condemn him for bending national sovereignty just for the life of a woman!

One cannot help but ask — what could have given birth to this extremely distorted image that the public and the media seem to be ready to believe?

Let us look elsewhere for a moment. Throughout the six months of Jokowi’s presidency, one word gets bandied about obsessively: “tegas” – iron-fisted.

So much has been invested in portraying this image: The uncompromising attitude, the spectacles of ship burnings, the public bulldozing of alcohol bottles and finally the reinstatement of capital punishment.

And yet we know the image of Jokowi is always and forever haunted by the spectre of the puppet master of old regimes.

Do we not all remember the memes of Jokowi being Megawati Sukarnoputri’s baby? And all the public spectacles of disrespect with which Megawati and her family members treated Jokowi since the beginning? And of course, who could have forgotten the incident, not so long ago, of Mother Mega scolding Little Jokowi for not being a loyal enough member to the party?

Looking at the big picture would seem to hint at a disturbing question. Could it be possible that all these debacles be symptoms of the Indonesian political sphere upon trying to work out its own insecurities regarding its own self-image?

Images and the narrative they construct is the only way through which most of the public understands its politics. The postponement of Veloso’s execution, therefore, is a high-stakes event around which we must be careful to react.

Let me ask a stupid question: Who should we really be thanking for the fact that she lives?

Yes, Jokowi obviously played a part by not saying, “to hell with further investigations, let’s just go ahead and kill her!” for which he deserves a degree of respect.

But should we not be thanking Philippine President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino for his insistence as well?

Should we not be thanking Maria Kristina Sergio, even, for having surrendered to the police and enabling the postponement in the first place? But of course, thanking these people will mean that we acknowledge their part in Jokowi’s final instruction, which will once again bring up the question of Indonesian sovereignty, again airing our dirty insecurities for all to see.

But does this not all hint at deadlock?

On the one hand, it seems that the Indonesian public is still obsessed with spectacular presentations of violence and destruction, especially against foreign objects and cultures: burning ships that have been crossing our water borders, destroying alcoholic beverages that have long been a symbol of white men’s culture, killing 

people whom we claim to be corrupting our youth with drugs, and so on. We are a strong nation! 

On the other hand, we have witnessed what a monster we can become if we are to follow this line of obsessive thinking without further inspection. Is this brand of strength really what we wanted?

What is presented in the postponement of Veloso’s execution then, is a decision: Will we celebrate the fact she lives but naively stop there, thanking Jokowi for his temporary mercy, biding time until she actually stands in front of a firing squad?

Or will we decide to use this momentum, now  there is room to breathe, to pursue our line of questioning against the often all too Kafkaesque functioning of our government?

Many have mentioned that when looking at Veloso, one must look at the bigger picture of drug networks, human trafficking and fairness of capital punishment. 

But there is an even bigger picture at play: The psychological sphere of politics, the 

ideologies at work upon the public and the politicians alike even without their awareness, which causes us to think of 

these problems the way we do now.