One interesting statement was raised by an Indonesian in the Internet discussion yahoogroups “apakabar”: “The Indonesian politics is a bad politics”.  Curiously, is there any good politics?

Many people are uncomfortable talking about politics. Either they hate, dislike or simply don’t care about it.  If one usually gives a spin answer to a direct question, she might be labeled as politician—a bad connotation.  People generally think of politics as something bad, closely associated with falsehood, lie and all other wicked acts purposely done for private gains. As Ambrose Bierce once said, “Politics is the conduct of public affairs for private advantage."

They also view politics as something made up of irrelevancies. When one hears someone else talks about politics, in the back up of her mind is, “he is talking something useless”.  We commonly hear, “stop talking politics!” or “politics? No, it’s just a non-sense!”  Even Bill Clinton, one of the most skilled politicians in the US, said, “No wonder Americans hate politics when, year in and year out, they hear politicians make promises that won't come true because they don't even mean them—campaign fantasies that win elections but don't get nations moving again.”

In other words, politics is becoming useless.

However, a closer look at politics reveals that it is not as bad as one might have generally thought. According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, politics is (a) the art or science of government, (b) the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy, and (c) the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government.

Butler once wrote, “Politics is the art of the possible.[1] It can make impossibility becomes possible, like the seemingly impossible Susilo Bambang Yudoyohono, given the 8% of the votes that his party got in the parliament election last year, to win overwhelming votes in the presidential election because, partly, the ability of his political campaigns to stress his differences from the other candidate, Megawati. It can also make the possibility becomes impossible, like the possible President Megawati to be president in 1999, but ended up becoming vice-president due to the political maneuver of some politicians.

Politics actually does not need to be viewed so negatively.  The art of possibility can hold together one of the most diverse nations on the globe—Indonesia, counteracting the centrifugal forces that can potentially tear the nation apart. No matter how bad one views it, politics is still necessary for a society to develop. It goes to the fundamental question which has interested philosophers since before the time of Plato: How and who should organize society? It is clear that human communities need some kind of administrative and executive functionaries to coordinate the gathering and distribution of resources, physical and social resources, equitably to all members of society. And political work is the means the civilized world has for deciding who and how the society should be organized.

The truth is, the real problem is not politics. Clinton said politics is becoming useless not because it is a politics. It is becoming irrelevant because “they” have made it so. Who are they? They are the politicians. Many view politics as an art of deceiving since they see politicians often mislead people. Or it might be an art of lying as politicians never tell the truth. Or it could be an art of forgetting since politicians always forget what they said. As Charles De Gaulle once said, "I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians."

In the context of Indonesia, unfortunately De Gaulle’s conclusion seems to be right. Corrupt and incapable politicians have long dominated the nation’s politics. Money politics now dictates most political decision at every level. As a result, people become so apathetic with politics and politicians. Something must be done to prevent further disinterest of the people in politics.  While majority of the country’s politicians are not up to the people’s expectation—either morally or intellectually bankrupt, there is still a small portion of them who are consistently working to promote a better Indonesia.

Just as there is good and bad in everything, there are good politicians and bad politicians. It is not hard to accept this reality, but what is more difficult is how to distinguish between them. So, what is the difference between good and bad politicians?

The difference rests in four alphabets: Bad politicians often talk about poli-tics, while good politicians often talk about poli-cy. For bad politicians, politics is everything. They come to power through politics, they defend their power with politics and in most cases they “die” because of politics. The order of their priority is as follow: Politics, personality and policy. No wonder, when it comes to a policy making process they always politicizing it because they see policy less important than politics.

Politics, when it is played by bad politicians will end up just like what Dalton Camp remarked, “… is made up largely of irrelevancies.”