Jakarta, August 2025

You open Instagram. You are in shock. You watch a video of a police armored car hitting a green-jacket-wearing motorcycle taxi driver in the middle of the protesting crowd. As the crowd closes in, the armored car stops for a few seconds before running over the driver underneath it.

You should be having the time of your life. You’re in your mid-20s. You finally have the chance to earn your own salary. You work at a hip, multinational tech company that everyone knows. You’re working in one of those skyscrapers you’ve looked up from the congested streets below, right at the central business district. 

But, it takes you an hour and a half to commute to the office because it’s so expensive to find a room in the city. Every morning and evening, you’re squeezed in the sea of people taking the train and public bus. You’re worried every quarter because the company you thought is your second family is letting people go.

Just earlier this year, the government announced budget efficiencies in response to the worsening global economy. You thought to yourself, “Everyone must be going through the same thing. Or worse.” So, you keep your head down and work hard because that’s all you can do. You just have to be thankful that you earn enough to pay your bills, hang out with friends and even treat your parents to dinner.

In August, just two days before Independence Day, you saw some of the people’s representatives dancing happily during their regularly scheduled meeting on TV. “So unprofessional”, you thought. Some of the faces you recognize because they used to be on TV. These are the people who forced our cars to move aside in public roads because they overschedule themselves and forget to anticipate Jakarta’s traffic. Still, you shrug it off because you need to reach your KPIs.

Not even a week after Independence Day, you read the news that the people’s representatives will be receiving a pay bump. You’re confused because you and your friends question exactly what they do on a daily basis. You started to go through the details of their monthly wage*. 

• Base Salary: IDR 4.2M (Hey, turns out your company pays you more than them)
• Spouse allowance: 10% from base salary (You don’t have that, but OK, sure)
• Children allowance: 2% from base salary (You still have a long way to go to have kids)
• Employment allowance: IDR 9.7M (You wonder why would they get another allowance on top of their base salary)
• Rice allowance: IDR30k (You don’t even have meal allowance)
• Tax allowance: IDR 2.7M (You had to pay your taxes from your salary)
• Assembly allowance: IDR 2M (You wish you got extra cash for showing up to the weekly meeting)
• Honorary allowance: IDR 5.6M (You question what to honor from them)
• Communication allowance: IDR 15.5M (Your internet and phone bills don’t even reach IDR 1M)
• Supervision & budgeting allowance: IDR 3.75M (Now they are just making up stuff!)
• Housing allowance: IDR 50M (You recheck the housing app and see that the rent for the studio apartment you wanted and couldn’t afford is IDR 5M)

*USD 1 = ~IDR 15,000 | SEK 1 = ~IDR 1,700 

The cheapest burger at McDonalds’ is priced at IDR 15,000

You pull out your calculator and add them up. They will make over IDR 101M every month. The minimum wage in the capital city is IDR 5.3M so they will make 20 times more than the average person in the city! You read someone made a comparison with the US and Singapore. The MPs in those countries ‘only’ make 3.6x and 3.7x the minimum wage there, respectively. 

You see your social media are flooded with people voicing protests about this proposed pay bump. You watch one of the MPs tried to justify the housing allowance by saying that her current house is quite far from the parliament. Her house is actually near your home, and you still have to go by train to reach the office. You remember that she used to be a soap opera star in the 2000s, so she should have the cash to buy her own house near the parliament.

You see people clamoring for the dissolution of the parliament. You understand what they are coming from, but you are shocked to see an MP responding that the people who wanted that are “dumbasses”. That is not a word you’d like to see from an MP representing you.

As you commute to the office a few days later, you see university students and the masses gathering in front of the parliament, protesting. As your bus gets diverted because of road closures, you also spot an army of police in their full gear preparing water cannons and tear gasses. You feel disassociated because you are now just responding to Slack messages like nothing is happening outside the office walls.

The next day, you’re at the office again. You see a photo on social media of a lady wearing a pink hijab who stood bravely in front of the police during the rain. You find it unusual that you do not see any coverage about the protests in the news. It is lunch time and you read an announcement that everyone is instructed to go home because the protests are getting bigger. In every major city in the country, there is a demonstration demanding change and accountability from the MPs. You have not heard anything from the President. Several MPs are seen at the airport, including the one who called the people ‘dumbasses’. Dozens of students are reported missing. 

You order a motorcycle taxi from your phone to get to the station because the buses are out of service. You arrive home before the sun sets, a true rarity. After dinner, you turn on the TV. Just mentions of the protests but no ‘breaking news’ segment with detailed coverage. You remember seeing a ‘breaking news’ segment for the wedding of a former president’s son. 

You open Instagram. You are in shock. You watch a video of a police armored car hitting a green-jacket-wearing motorcycle taxi driver in the middle of the protesting crowd. As the crowd closes in, the armored car stops for a few seconds before running over the driver underneath it. The next video you watch is a few civilians chasing the armored car on their bikes through a road you know well because it is very near to your office. The armored car manages to escape to their headquarters. The motorcycle driver, whose name is Affan, is dead.

It’s 3 AM and you’re still on Instagram. You even reinstall TikTok just to see more updates. The protesters are now gathering outside the police headquarters. Most of them are fellow drivers who are wearing green jackets. You check Twitter, an NGO is reporting that dozens of students are missing and a medic car is ambushed by the police. You keep scrolling. You repost some posts that are coming from credible sources. Somehow it’s the only way you can help.

You stay awake until the morning. You receive an email from the office saying everyone should work from home today. You see a convoy of motorcycle drivers is being planned to bring Affan to the cemetery. The protests are now losing its focus, one is demanding for change in the parliament and another is demanding for accountability from the police.

You find pictures of suspicious people in the protests, destroying fiber optic hubs and burning bus stops. Those are not protesters. These protesters need the internet and even need the bus to go home. Several MPs’ lavish houses are looted and destroyed in a concerted manner. The MPs, who are targeted because they have made inappropriate comments before, are not home. The looters go home with a Patek Philippe watch and a full-sized Iron Man statue, among others.

The social media are colored with pink and green, representing the lady who stood up to the police and the driver who was killed. You finally catch a glimpse of the President on TV. But he is not talking to the people. He does not respond to the people. Instead, he accused the protesters for treason. Instead of meeting the people, he only reached out to the party leaders. Instead of pushing accountability for the police, he commended them for a great job for dealing with the demonstrations. 

You see a group of public figures come up with 17 short-term and 8 long-term demands for the parliament**. A week later, you read that the parliament cancelled the proposed salary increase and revised it. The 50 million housing allowance is removed, but several allowances are raised. When you pull out the calculator again it still amounts to a staggering IDR 65M. Even without the housing allowance in the original proposal, this new salary is still higher by around IDR 10M.

While the MPs do their job in luxury and without any transparency, you are still going to the office in packed trains and buses. You are still choosing what lunch to get depending on the promotion in some app to save money. You are still worried that you would be laid off. You are still bothered by the government’s unnecessary spendings despite the so-called efficiency.

You are still frustrated that the government rarely listens to the people. You are still feeling powerless seeing some protesters who were wrongfully detained during the demonstrations are now considered suspects for provoking unrest and destruction of public properties. You are still mad that the officers who were in the armored car were only demoted, suspended for 20 days, and asked to publicly apologize.

**17 & 8 is a symbolic number representing the Indonesian Independence Day on 17th of August