Marah Halim*
Chameleon or cangcingok is a reptile which include to familia Agamidae. The excess of this animal is its ability to camouflage itself, to change its body colour according to its place. If it perchs against a coffee bar its colour will accommodate the bar’s colour. At coffee plantation, farmers often found this reptile while cleaning talls (kerpe). At least there are two advantages from its ability to camouflage, to avoid its enemies and to deceive its preys.
Animal’s attitudes is a parable of human’s. In our holy book, al-Qur’an, God make several animals as a example of a good attitude or a bad one. The animals like bees (al-nahl), ants (al-naml), and birds (al-thayr) are the example of the good characters, while animal like spiders used as the bad characters. The hope is that human being could adopt and adapt the positive characters and avoiding the negative ones.
This article doesn’t mean to discuss deeply about the special lizard, here I just want to make a chameleon as a parable for politicians in facing the next local election (pilkada). We can see that the characters of chameleon in local politician style to attract their constituent. As if they bring water to the people though actually they will exploit them to send them to the power. And they will use the power not to make prosperity, whereas they will make the people more suffering.
Day to day we get closer to election time and the chameleon’s touch more felt. There is a politician who give a great attention to peoples like giving aids to mosque and giving alms to the poor though he/she usually was not like that. There is also a politician who wear moslem cap (kopiah) in their pictures on billboard though he doesn’t wear it in his daily activities. Shortly, all contestants will all out to attract peoples, especially common peoples in villages (urang kampung). All contestants will show their virtue to peoples in order to get their vote. This is because in our democracy the winner in election is the one with much voters.
In our religion perpective, chameleon attitude is similar to hypocrisy. Our prophet (peace be upon him) said there are four signs of hypocrite; if the talk they must be liar, if they promise they will deny, and if they are trusted they will betray. Like a chameleon, a hypocrite will easily penetrate their potential preys; they will act as if they care and listen all complaint of peoples though deep in their heart they actually ignore it. In their campaigns they will give promises, they will do everything to improve peoples destiny but we must note that only in their mouth.
As academician we must warn our people not to “fall in love” easily with a heavenly promises. They must be carefull because such the promises always stated in all occasion. They have to choose a candidate based on rational consideration. They need not to choose a candidate eventhough the candidate is their relative or live in on village or their best friends if they see that the candidate is not a potential candidate.
Chameleon’s characters are not a good characters. A real politician (politisi sejati) will never adopt this kind of characters. They will perform as they are, no special tendencies to harm people or to cheat them. For the real politician, to be a winner is not the only purpose, being a winner is the start line to work for the peoples. We miss a real politician and we pray for your victory.
*Gayo Observer in Banda Aceh.
