Insensitive political elite

The recent violent protests in Indonesia, which forced President Prabowo Subianto to deploy the military and cancel a high-profile trip to China, reveals a deep-seated public fury that resonates far beyond its borders. The trigger was lawmakers voting themselves a monthly housing allowance of over $3,000, or almost ten times the minimum wage in Jakarta, the capital, amid a severe cost-of-living crisis.

This display of elite insensitivity has a disturbing parallel in Pakistan, where provincial and federal parliamentarians recently approved raises of up to 138% for themselves, citing high inflation, while asking career government employees to settle for pocket change and be happy about it. Both cases underscore a global pattern where political elites prioritise self-enrichment over public welfare. In Indonesia, the housing allowance controversy erupted while workers protested low wages and mass layoffs, highlighting the stark inequality between rulers and the ruled. Pakistan's decision to grant monumental raises to lawmakers — while offering civil servants only a 10% increase — exposes a profound disconnect in a nation reliant on IMF support and burdened by debt.

In fact, raises may be the only bit of House business issue where PTI parliamentarians have offered no meaningful opposition — a further illustration of entrenched privilege. We live in a world where schoolteachers make poverty wages while politicians, whose parliamentary attendance rates are often so bad that they would lead to expulsion for a school student, are among the highest-salaried people in the country.

However, while the Indonesian government has backtracked on some of the new benefits in an effort to placate protesters, Pakistani lawmakers have the assurance that almost no legislative malfeasance can stir our voters into action. Our parliamentarians defended their pay hikes by citing how wages had been unchanged for several years. The solution should not be to double their pay, but rather to introduce minimum annual increments that ensure salaries steadily increase without seeming to insult voters.