Muhammad Hisabul Huda is just trying to survive the harsh reality of life and feed his family.
As a contract or freelance teacher in Probolinggo, East Java, he can only get IDR 5,000 (30 cent USD) per hour, with maximum 100 hours a month. So, even if he is working like a dog the whole day, he can only get around IDR 500,000 per month. That is barely enough to cover transportation, let alone food, rent, healthcare, and education.
That is why he has to do moonlighting and take any jobs to add more money just to survive the month. When a job opened as a pendamping lokal desa, a village consultant or assistant, in a government program, he quickly applied and got the job. This is real work, involving real responsibilities, real time, and real labor. He did both jobs seriously, day after day, with no privilege, no protection, no safety net.
Until one day, prosecutors came knocking on his door, questioned him, and put him behind bars pending trial. The accusation? Corruption. He is alleged to have caused IDR 118 million in state losses over five years simply for doing two jobs.
This story alone should force any society to confront its conscience. What kind of system criminalizes survival? What kind of justice punishes poverty while celebrating obscene accumulation? Over five years, the so-called “state loss” attributed to Huda averages less than IDR 2 million per month, money that barely allows a family to breathe, let alone live with dignity. And yet, this man now faces public disgrace, criminal charges, and incarceration, as if he were a major plunderer of national wealth.
Now place this tragedy beside the political realities of today’s Indonesia.
One of President Prabowo Subianto’s closest aides, Angga Raka Prabowo, holds three different key government positions simultaneously, earning nearly IDR 1 billion per month, entirely from public funds.
These positions are strategic, powerful, and highly paid. They concentrate authority, influence, and wealth in the hands of one politically connected individual. Yet no prosecutor has dared to question the legality or morality of such accumulation. No investigation has been launched. No arrest warrant issued. Silence reigns.
Then there is Teddy Indra Wijaya, a lieutenant colonel who simultaneously serves as cabinet secretary, receiving dual salaries from the military and civilian budgets. His double income arrangement directly contradicts TNI law and principles of bureaucratic discipline and institutional ethics. Yet again, no legal consequences follow. The law looks away.
Beyond these individuals lies a much larger pattern: more than forty deputy ministers currently serve as commissioners in state-owned enterprises, drawing dual incomes while wielding overlapping regulatory and commercial power. This is both conflict of interest and institutionalized predation. Public office becomes a marketplace of elite bargaining, where positions are distributed not for service, but as rewards for loyalty.
At the apex of this system stands Luhut Pandjaitan, who during the administration of Joko Widodo accumulated more than a dozen strategic roles spanning infrastructure, energy, mining, maritime affairs, geopolitics, and investment. No prosecutor ever summoned him. No corruption charges were filed. No legal inquiry probed the sheer impossibility of ethical governance under such concentration of power.
Thus, Indonesia’s legal reality becomes brutally clear: holding multiple positions is not corruption, unless you are poor. For the powerless, legality is rigid, merciless, and absolute. For the powerful, legality is flexible, negotiable, and conveniently silent.
The prosecution of Muhammad Hisabul Huda exposes a grotesque inversion of justice. The state hunts a man earning IDR 2 million a month, while worshipping those collecting nearly IDR 1 billion. It is not law enforcement, but class discipline.
This selective cruelty reveals how deeply class hierarchy has penetrated Indonesia’s legal institutions. Poverty itself becomes suspicious. Survival becomes criminalized. A man working two jobs to feed his family is framed as a threat to public finance, while political elites bleeding the treasury through multi-position accumulation are celebrated as indispensable leaders.
What message does this send to millions of Indonesians trapped in precarious employment? Do not seek dignity. Do not strive for survival. Do not resist economic suffocation. Remain silent, obedient, and underpaid. The moment you step beyond your assigned social boundary, the law will descend upon you.
This is how oligarchic governance sustains itself: not merely through wealth, but through fear.
The moral collapse becomes even more obscene when we examine the scale of alleged wrongdoing. IDR 118 million over five years, less than IDR 2 million per month, is framed as devastating state loss. Meanwhile, political appointees drain billions monthly in salaries, allowances, bonuses, and corporate privileges, all legally sanctioned by presidential decree. The law magnifies crumbs into crimes, while shrinking mountains into administrative trivia.
Indonesia’s anti-corruption discourse has long functioned as political theater. Petty offenders are paraded as trophies to maintain the illusion of accountability. Headlines are manufactured. Handcuffs are displayed. Press conferences are staged. Meanwhile, grand corruption remains structurally protected by elite alliances, institutional capture, and legal insulation.
The arrest of a teacher trying to survive the hardship of life produces dramatic optics. It reassures the public that “the law is working.” But it diverts attention from the massive hemorrhage of public funds occurring daily through elite networks, political patronage, and corporate-state collusion. The powerless become sacrificial offerings in a system that cannot afford to confront its true predators.
Even more dangerous is the cultural normalization of this injustice. When society accepts that a poor man deserves jail while elites deserve luxury, ethical collapse becomes complete. Law is no longer about justice, but a tool of domination.
The poor are taught to internalize guilt for their poverty. They are made to believe that their survival strategies constitute moral failure. Meanwhile, elites are celebrated as national assets, regardless of their predatory practices.
Such inversion corrodes democracy from within. Democracy is not merely about elections. It is about equality before the law. When legality becomes stratified by class, democracy collapses into oligarchy. Voting becomes ritual while institutions become spectacle, with power consolidating silently.
In this sense, the arrest of Muhammad Hisabul Huda is a political event, revealing the true architecture of power: who is protected, who is expendable, and whose lives are deemed disposable.
The tragedy is compounded by the silence of institutions that should defend justice. Where are the national prosecutors? Where is the Corruption Eradication Commission? Where is parliament? Where are human rights bodies?
If Indonesia still claims to be a republic grounded in justice, this case must ignite national outrage. Prosecutors must be forced to explain why they hunt the poor while shielding billion-rupiah elites. Parliament must justify the legality of multi-position accumulation. Civil society must refuse to normalize cruelty disguised as law.
Until Indonesia dares to arrest its billion-rupiah elites with the same enthusiasm it displays toward a struggling teacher, its anti-corruption rhetoric will remain hollow, its rule of law fraudulent, and its democracy nothing more than a carefully staged illusion.
And Muhammad Hisabul Huda will stand as a living indictment of a nation that has forgotten the meaning of justice.
