bernando J. sujibto 🇮🇩

This chart is a brutal reflection of why public frustration toward political elites in many emerging markets continues intensifying because it shows that Indonesian lawmakers are compensated at levels that look extraordinarily disconnected from the underlying economic reality faced by the average citizen, with parliament salary reaching roughly 14.7x GDP per capita, among the highest ratios globally and second only to the Philippines in this dataset, despite Indonesia still remaining a country where purchasing power remains relatively weak, informal employment is massive, public service quality remains uneven, infrastructure bottlenecks persist, legal enforcement often feels inconsistent, and upward economic mobility for large parts of the population remains structurally difficult. And this is precisely why charts like this become politically toxic because citizens naturally begin asking a very simple question: what exactly are taxpayers receiving in return? In high-income countries, lawmakers may also earn very large nominal salaries, but those economies simultaneously generate far stronger productivity, higher institutional quality, better healthcare systems, stronger education outcomes, more efficient bureaucracy, higher legal predictability, and materially better public goods overall, meaning political compensation exists within a much larger and wealthier economic ecosystem. But in Indonesia, the optics become far more uncomfortable because the political class increasingly appears capable of extracting upper-middle-class or even developed-market lifestyles from an economy that still struggles to generate broad-based prosperity for much of the population itself. And perhaps the harshest part is that compensation alone is probably not even the real issue. The real issue is performance. Citizens are generally willing to tolerate highly compensated leaders if the country visibly becomes richer, more efficient, more meritocratic, less corrupt, and economically stronger over time. But when corruption scandals remain persistent, policymaking appears inconsistent, infrastructure projects repeatedly face rent-seeking concerns, and wealth creation remains concentrated among political insiders, conglomerates, and connected elites, high political compensation begins looking less like professionalization and more like institutionalized extraction. Importantly, this also helps explain why anti-elite sentiment, populism, and distrust toward institutions continue rising globally because once the gap between elite living standards and ordinary household realities becomes too visible, citizens increasingly stop believing the system operates primarily for collective national advancement and instead begin viewing politics as a mechanism for self-enrichment among those already close to power. Ultimately, this chart reflects something much deeper than salary levels alone because it exposes the uncomfortable reality that in many emerging markets, the political class often succeeds in upgrading its own prosperity far faster than the nation it supposedly represents, and over time that divergence itself becomes corrosive to institutional trust, social cohesion, and long-term political legitimacy.

19 Mart'ta mesele İmamoğlu değildi, bugün de mesele CHP değil. Mesele Türkiye'yi karanlığa sürükleyenlerle omuz omuza ve ihanet içinde partisini işgal eden kayyum da değil. Mesele ülkemizde onurlu, huzurlu bir yaşam ve gelecek hakkının adım adım gasp edilmesidir. Bu bir yaşam mücadelesidir, hepimizindir.

solusi pemerintah untuk mengentaskan kemiskinan.

📸 Skuad Real Madrid saat juara UCL secara 3x beruntun pun telah habis, setelah Dani Carvajal mengucapkan salam perpisahannya tadi. 🤍🥹

Kemarin ada salah satu orng yg ngomong (laki jg btw) “gue gk baca buku-buku penulis cewe A karena gk relate” dan rame2 di reply-nya pada sepakat. Terus ketika perempuan mengungkapkan hal yg sama, lo tau responnya gimana? “Jangan baca cuma karena relate” wkwk. Standar ganda.

Gua rasa, penulis laki-laki yang paling bagus menulis soal perempuan itu Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Coba aja baca karya dia: - Gadis Pantai - Panggil Aku Kartini Saja - Bumi Manusia - Arus Balik

ini rame banget pas lewat depan DRP kemarin.. kok gak rame ya diberitain di media2 besar? ada apa??🥲

Yang lagi rame diaplikasi sebelah sampe ke Negara Jiran juga. Bagaimana tanggapan kalian gaes? Saya pribadi menanggapi sentilan dari tetangga ini harus jadi cermin retak buat dunia pendidikan kita

18 Mei 1998. Salah satu tuntutan Reformasi yang tidak terpenuhi: diadilinya Soeharto beserta kroni-kroninya. Kroni-kroni Soeharto melenggang bebas dan bahkan tetap aktif berpolitik hingga kini. 📷 Sygma / Getty Images