Requiem for a King

Bupati with beautiful family pictures, 2017.

Governor Remigo’s voice cracks over the phone. At first, I think it’s the weak signal trying to catch up to our dusty jeep as it shakes and lurches down the windy pock-marked road from Pakpak Bharat towards Medan. Mountains are typically welcome respite against Indonesia’s hot—think Bali or Bandung—but here in northern Sumatera, mountains mean a 60 mile journey takes 5 hours, bad cell phone reception, and risk of back pain, butt pain, incontinence, and oh, sudden death. 93% of the world's traffic fatalities occur in low and middle-income countries. Anyone who does work in Subsaharan Africa, Southeast Asia or Central America knows and tries to forget this. It’s the only commute. So at the beginning of each journey, whether born again or atheist, you cross yourself, say your prayers and take deep breath to scenic mountain edge with stick guardrail, to two-way one way dusty highway, and to large tan cow feeding on inconsistent foliage at road’s bend, then step in.

It was Ibu Evodia who shook me out of my slumber. ”It’s Governor Remigo,” she said in urgent whisper thrusting her large Samsung cellphone with sequinned case from the back seat into my ear, “he’s at RSCM Hospital and wants to talk with you.” Governor Remigo is in jail so it was possible to still be dreaming. I certainly didn’t want to wake up to a nightmare. In it, the Bupati is arrested for accepting $38,000 dollars. The Bupati is Walking Doctor’s [WD] first and only customer. The Bupati is innocent and everyone knows it. The Bupati will go to jail for up to 20 years depending on the speed and extent of his confession. 

Snacks at the Bupati’s residence

When I first heard of the Bupati’s arrest I was 22,000 miles away in Time Square about to descend into the bustling 42nd street and Broadway subway. I laughed an insincere laugh. Who gets arrested for $38,000? Besides, Bupati is a millionaire. Bupati’s father was also Bupati, who before that was a successful businessman who passed on his wealth to his eldest son, Yolando Remigo Berutu. Remigo dutifully grew the family fortune many times over before himself becoming Pakpak Bharat’s Bupati in 2010, then again in 2016. I have eaten multiple times with Bupati Remigo and his family. During these events, Bupati assumed an almost Kris Kringle like persona clothed in casual batik, treating us guests to an elaborate array of street eats that he had hand-picked. The dishes were laid out like a culinary brocade over an immense teak table as if textured cloth. On, around and atop were ornate goblets, real silver silver-ware, silk cloths, formal framed pictures, thick textured columns, vaulted ceilings and gleaming white marble floors of the governor’s mansion. The Bupati told stories. He played with his children lifting them high into the air, “Where you going?” He involved each guest no matter what his/her organizational position. He asked me at our first dinner, “Wilson, Dr. New York, so what do you think about our little town of Pakpak Bharat?”

When recounting this story as evidence of the Bupati’s innocence, my western friends look at me sympathetically as if I am doctor because I failed study of law. My Indonesian friends think the Bupati could be innocent if weren’t for the amount of $38K he allegedly took. “Usually it’s $30,000,000,” my friend Hasan says. On hearing the bad news, my Mom as Walking Doctors’ number one investor encourages me to not travel so far away where it is less safe and to move back home while I’m at it, “You know Salt Lake City was just ranked the number one place to live in the country!”

Bupati knew the WD system as well an anyone

To all this I retort: Corrupt officials don’t let you play with their children. They don’t feed you for two years and never ask for even satay in return. They certainly don’t conspire with you about how to improve the health of pregnant mothers and newborns. I have never seen a public figure as beloved as the Bupati. Wherever he went, streams of people would flow towards him as if he were a limitless receptacle. To the crowds he would boom in loud resonant baritone, “Mari…datang”… “Please….come”, literally welcoming guests with open arms while—because this was Indonesia— submitting to countless selfies. There was palpable excitement. People knew Bupati Remigo’s presence meant that whatever activity he was attending, he was all in. The mystery as to what could garner the Bupati’s interest added to the spectacle as did the consonance of a powerful, literally large, abnormally funny functionary listening attentively, trying things out, probing, and summarizing. Imagine President Trump (ok, that’s impossible), a Senator, the Mayor, a health commissioner— any leader— committing hours to citizens for the purpose of understanding and appreciating. When in 2017 Walking Doctors began its work to make seven of Pakpak Bharat’s eight Health Centres or Puskesmas, paperless, the Bupati was at the inaugural training from the morning on. By late afternoon he was teaching the health staffs how to use the system. “See,” he would say, “It’s actually quite easy. I could be doctor, you know.” To this the crowd laughed, “Ok, if I were a doctor I would use this WD [Way-Day] system.

One should never try to understand Indonesian politics over Whatsapp at 12am in a busy Time Square CVS store. I have moved to the candy section. There, Ibu Evodia explained, “Bupati wasn’t careful,” she said, “he made a lot of people mad. You saw how he fired the Director of RSUD Salak Hospital twice for delaying implementation of WD. Now imagine he did that for all parts of Pakpak Bharat’s government. This included the police which was trying to get him to pay him money on account of Ibu Bupati.”

Ibu Bupati means Mother Bupati, understood as Remigo’s wife, “I don’t understand,” I said, “what does the Bupati’s wife have to do with any of this?”

“Ibu Bupati’s years back, sponsored an event for her women’s advocacy group. Being new to her role as Ibu Bupati, she had expenses that didn’t have time to go through the proper channels. So she used her own money first and then got reimbursed later from public funds. You can’t do this in Indonesian government. So the police got involved. They threatened to put Ibu Bupati in jail if Remigo didn’t pay them three billion rupiah.”

“Three billion rupiah?!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, almost $250,000 U.S,” Evodia lamented, “and he refused to pay because he is Bupati Remigo! Of course he had the money. Then while in Jakarta at a conference last week, he changed political parties. Then two days later, he pledged formal support to President Jokowi’s re-election knowing full well Probowo’s influence in Sumatera. He tried to do too much, too fast. And now he is in jail.”

I hate fair weather fans, know it alls, Monday morning quarterbacks, political pundits…what have you. Maybe it was me killing the messenger, maybe it was too much too late, but I felt like Ibu Evodia was blaming the Bupati, as if the system in question were too stupid, big and inanimate to assign it responsibility. To me this is like forgiving rape because of patriarchy. Accepting that Olympic bronze medal winners are losers. Sympathising with doctors who see a patient every 6 minutes in order to “survive” [then drive home in a Mercedes]. I had been taught similarly at the Kennedy School, “Who cares how brave and great you are if you are dead?” the professor said. He listed examples of leaders who ultimately exercised poor leadership: Che Guevara, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Yitzhak Rabin. “Wouldn’t it have been better if they had been around for finish what they started? And what of their families and communities?”

This perspective is stupid to me. First, the people who say this are academicians, aka individuals who take risk in test-tubes or foment double-blinded trials in which they would never enroll. Look at Stanford U. with its once murder capital of the country East Palo Alto neighbour. John Hopkins U. and East Baltimore. Yale U. and New Haven. Clean up your own shit before you tell others how to wipe theirs. 

Second, who here is a clairvoyant? A baby falls on the tracks and a good Samaritan jumps in to save said baby. If Samaritan gets hit by the train, was this a fault of intellect and math? Better not have attempted anything? Better be a couch potato? Do true leaders operate in a world of slo-mo? 

Third, when is the right time to die?  A woman dies of old age and has raised three great kids and earned a pension. A man dies at forty-one of cancer, having forestalled that hike of the grand canyon and that trip to Chiang Mai for when he’d have more time and money. A young man make shit loads of bonus money at his VC fund. He’s the life of every party, then overdoses on heroine in the woman’s bathroom at one of them. A boy dies a painful death in the world’s best oncology unit. A homeless women freezes to death. Ibu Evodia boasted to all those who would listen not three months prior of her association with a Bupati who didn’t give a damn about anything but good. Now that Bupati is in jail, she has the audacity to say that he did too much too soon as if systems are not ultimately created and comprised of people. 

Bupati Remigo as it happens, is on the other end of the line. The crack I hear is his voice. The bouncing of the car is incidental.

“Hey, it’s me,” says the Bupati, “I heard you were in Pakpak Bharat.” Bupati speaks impeccable English. I will not even try to speak Indonesian.

“Yes, we have your project to complete,” I say, “I heard you are at RSCM. Are you sick? You know I am a paediatrician but can make an exception.”

“No not sick,” Bupati says, “This is how someone like me gets out of prison a few hours a week. What $10,000 a month can buy in Jakarta, right?”

“Yes, money much better spent in Pakpak Bharat.”

“I am very grateful that you came back to support the people of Pakpak Bharat,” Bupati says, “You know how much I believe in WD. I am just sorry that I could not be there. I am sorry for a lot of things.” And at this there is interruption and I know it is because of Bupati’s tears.

Ibu Evodia and Silvia are in the back seat crying now too. My voice and words complement the Bupati’s. All is clear as to what and how things are said. 

“I want you to know how sorry I am,” I say. It is my turn, “I am angry this could happen. Please let me know if I can do anything for you and your family.”

“No nothing to do, but to pray,” Bupati says.

“Ok then, we- Dr. Silvia, Ibu Evodia, Dr. Tomas and me pray. We love you, think about you and pray.”

“I am not allowed to say more,” and with that our line with the Bupati is cut. 

Contract signing in 2018 for WD systems to support Pakpak Bharat health facilities for a period of 3 years

In six months, Bupati will be sentenced to seven years in prison. Five months and twenty eight days before that, the Bupati will be replaced by a Wakil or substitute Bupati and as a show of new force, in a single day, all of Bupati Remigo’s hundreds of pictures throughout the District are taken down. Citizens hold a candlelight vigil for not less than two weeks and Facebook Posts extol the Bupati, then suddenly as they came, stop. Then descend KPK investigators whose objective is to prove the case after the fact. No one stands up for the Bupati. In fact, everyone turns on the Bupati. In eight months every policy related to Bupati in Pakpak Bharat is erased, except for Walking Doctors. It initially survives the purge, having impressed the Wakil Bupati. But my former partner Bambang, sees advantage. As an Indonesian citizen, he holds the three year contract we made with the Bupati. He substitutes out the WD system without telling me with a drastically inferior product but in which he has financial stake. Ibu Evodia who was maintained as adviser in the original contract convinces the District Health Head that this action is the safer bet given what happened to Bupati. Bambang and Evodia communicate with me rarely and in riddles during the five months it takes to complete their new mission. In 12 months, KPK sets a minimum amount for its prosecution of government officials at $60,000 U.S. 

If there is a moral to this sordid tale, it only comes relative to Yolando Remigo Berutu. I think about Bupati’s large, creative, indefatigable spirit encaged; the tragic predicament of his wife and beautiful kids in Medan, who are from Bali, staying just so they can visit Bupati on the weekends; the tempered prospects of beautiful Indonesia with respect to corrupt legal and judiciary systems. It is hard to be chipper. The line between success and failure is fine but deliberate. Sometimes there is only requiem.

Better days