Vanilla. The Young Actors Project will perform renditions of “The Secret of NIMH” and “Romeo and Juliet” June 6-June 9 at the Malibu Stage Company. Two different age groups will present the story of a widowed field mouse, Mrs. Frisby, and her ...

Orlando Bloom talks dream destinations and favourite foodie cities29 MAY 2013 Hollywood actor Orlando Bloom lives life in the fast lane and his current schedule is no different. After a week at the Cannes Film Festival promoting his latest flick Zulu, he flew to New Zealand to finish filming The Hobbit ahead of a six-month stint on starring in Romeo and Juliet on Broadway.

The Pirates of the Caribbean star juggles his hectic professional life with a young family. He is married to Victoria's Secret model Miranda Kerr and they have an adorable two-year-old son Flynn. "I would love to take Flynn to see the pandas in Chengdu," revealed the 36-year-old.

In an interview with the airline, he talks his and Miranda's favourite foodie cities, tips for combating jet lag and his love for London.

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I have borrowed some words from Romeo and Juliet’s theme song and Harold Laswell’s phrase on politics for the title of this essay. In my view, these terms fit the issue well as the need mounts to embark on a different stage of reform in Indonesia.

And yet, given the nature of the problems that appear to have hit all spheres of public life and mutated to all state agencies and officers, this nation seems to be confronted with a vicious circle in terms of where the reform movement should head.

The recent survey results released by the Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI) suggested that the vast majority of Indonesians did not approve of the direction the country was heading in. Almost 60 percent of respondents took this stance, while around 30 percent said otherwise.

These figures only serve as confirmation. They were insignificant, as many of the social, economic and political problems have long been with us.

To chronologically list all of the problems can be very daunting and alarming – as if the country is under “the fire in the husk ready to flame” and confronted with imminent danger. To shed light on the topic, one needs only to refer to two important issues: democracy and corruption.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the 1998 reformation was the initiation of democracy. In the last 15 years, Indonesia has been regarded as the third largest democracy in the world after India and the US. It has been relatively consolidated, especially in the last ten years, with three free and fair elections conducted peacefully at three regular intervals in 1999, 2004, and 2009. In less than a year, Indonesia will hold another competitive election.

This practice of democracy has given the people freedom to express and articulate their interests, to contest any public offices without any structural barriers. In short, it is suffice to say that public liberty has been remarkably reinstalled – perhaps beyond the expectations of our founding fathers when they drafted the 1945 Constitution.

While such a situation is undoubtedly reassuring, with Indonesia eventually marching toward a decent system of governance, one cannot put aside the fact that our democracy is not without its problems.

For students of Indonesia’s contemporary political development, it is not difficult to see that our democracy still has unnecessary anomalies. These include an incoherent system of government –adopting a presidential form of government but behaving as if the country is administered through a parliamentary form of government due to the large number of political parties; the gap between structure and function in some high level state agencies such as the Regional Representatives Council (DPD) – while popularly elected it does not possess significant roles and function in the legislature; and finally, the ambiguous concept of the state –acknowledging the fact that the state is unitary, but allowing the regions to be administered autonomously except in monetary, religion, defense, education, and foreign policies.

This, among other things, has created psychological as well as bureaucratic confusion between district heads and mayors and governors, between elected leaders and appointed ministers who often behave as if they are the superiors of the former.

Democracy has been largely developed in the light of power politics, where procedures are intended to serve partisan interests. To illustrate the case: the big parties generally opted for a higher threshold to decide which parties were eligible to be in the House of Representatives and to nominate presidential candidates.

While such a stance is perfectly normal in any game of politics, the public needs to understand that it has nothing to do with the concern that democracy goes hand in hand with efficiency and effectiveness in governance when the number of political parties is small. Rather, it was driven primarily by an interest to dominate the realm of politics.

In a situation like this, which tends to develop over time, our practice of democracy has not only been procedurally biased, but also problematic. This will eventually put the public interest in jeopardy. It is only group or partisan interests that are actually aggregated and articulated.

Indonesia’s resources will not be able to serve its democracy, which relies heavily on partisan or group interests. No matter how rich the country, resources always have limits.

The scarcity of resources coupled with the way democratic politics has been developed are undoubtedly a good recipe for rampant, endless corruption. Regardless of the massive efforts of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to combat this evil deed, nobody can provide an answer as to when this will stop. This seemingly realist viewpoint is confirmed by the media’s daily coverage of the issue.

How democracy has been practiced, the incoherent system of government we are developing, and the naked-interpretation of Laswell’s understanding of politics have contributed to rampant corruption and have been the defects of Indonesia’s reform. They have not only overshadowed successes in developing public liberty, but have also hindered our macro-economic success to influence and shape the condition of the people.

Realizing the depth and scope of the problems, perhaps one cannot hope for the presidency, the House, or law enforcement agencies to embark on a comprehensive reform movement. And yet, we can always count on politicians that have the ability to lead, the competency, and the calling. Otherwise, Indonesia will continue to be in an incoherent situation where free and fair elections are held regularly, but where prosperity and stability are like pies in the sky.

The writer is the dean of the school of social and political sciences at State Islamic University (UIN), Jakarta.