Fuel to The Fire: Oligarchs in Freedom and Democracy
Fuel to The Fire: Oligarchs in Freedom and Democracy
escrito por Dini Harmita
Abstract
This data note is written to understand the role of oligarchs in Corruption, Collusion, Cartelisation-clientelism, and Nepotism as part of the fuel to the fire in limiting freedom within democracy. The research uses qualitative methodology with literature reviews and empirical research collections. It results in several roles of theirs including to cover the C4N and interfere elections. The discussion part uses the funding source argument to analyse their role. The conclusion suggests everyone including and especially the oligarchs themselves to understand why they call themselves democracy when they keep forcing us to do what we are not in favour of. The words seem to be flipped and the essence seems to be forgotten.
Keywords: Oligarchs, Corruption, Collusion, Cartelisation-clientelism, Freedom, Democracy
Introduction
Little we knew about the existence of the oligarchs until we realised their impacts in our daily life. Not all of us know that the soap we use for cleaning everything from our face to our house is produced using at least palm oil comes from the plantations that acquired their permits from bribing the governments and fooling the certification bodies. Only few of us acknowledge that the owners of those plantations tend to be from the oligarchy entities. It seems to be inevitable for having a hypothesis saying that those oligarchs either initiated and or were involved in the practices of Corruption, Collusion, Cartelisation-clientelism, and Nepotism (C4N). With the hypothesis, this data note is written as the parts of the research in answering the question of what is the main role of the oligarchs in the C4N scheme.
The current disasters everywhere are as imminent as the hypothesis. In the Indonesian case, the leading political parties through their government representatives who are in the favour of the oligarchs tend to blame the upstream e. g. the tea plantation companies when they have less contributions than the mining companies in the similar heights and areas; and real estate companies in the downstream.
The real estates that tend to be owned by Russian oligarchs were easy changing the status of the land from Rights to Manage to Rights to Build Concretes; one of is by bribing the governments and again fooling the poor to give their lands with unsustainable compensation. It gives them fuel to eat for a while but in the long run it makes them suffer from even more severe dimensions of poverty e. g. family conflicts and natural disasters. Yet instead of trying to fix those, when it comes to a law enacting where it's in the favour of such easy land conversion (one of), all political parties voted yes for that. It resonates with what the scholars who suggest public funding mentioned about the role of money in political parties and democracy including and primarily in Europe (Musial-Karg, Casal Bértoa, Gasor, 2025; Casal Bértoa, Sileander, and Lynge, 2024; Casal Bértoa and Lipcean, 2024; Casal Bértoa and Tsutskiridze, 2024; Casal Bértoa and José Rama, 2022; Casal Bértoa and Spirova 2019; Casal Bértoa and Rodríguez Teruel, 2016; Casal Bértoa, Moleenar, R. Piccio, and Rashkova, 2014).
Such democracy does exist not only in Indonesia but also in other countries with C4N including in Europe. The freedom for people to even understand and comprehend what is really happening is even covered by their efforts to reveal the truth e. g. through cyberattacks as part of the neoliberalism trap (Harmita 2007, Bennon and Fukuyama 2023).
Methodologies
The research is conducted qualitatively and so how the data note is written. This data is summarising the findings from the literature reviews and author’s experiences in doing empirical research related to the topics.
Results
One of the empirical research the author did might not be related with the C4N and oligarchs. Nevertheless, from time to time I realised they are very connected.
The research was conducted along with the project of revitalising the role of Sub Terminal Agribusiness in Indonesia funded by Japan International Cooperation Agency. The function is supposed to become a space for vegetable and fruit sellers to improve their wealth. Nonetheless, the government seems to be determined from the very beginning that they want to cover the C4N; indicated with the same results over time. No matter what treatment it is applied, the farmers tend to stay poor and the officials tend to be richer, at least in terms of economic capitals (Bourdieu, 1983).
Commodity based developments tend to be less resulting in sustainability because even for rice and estate crops as mentioned before, it tends to be only in the favour of those who support the oligarchs; e. g. the C4N actors.
C4N may sound new scholarly. Nevertheless, it actually combines the concepts of Corruption, Collusion, Cartelisation-clientelism, and Nepotism. To make it easier to mention I call it C4N.
In the European context, Russian oligarchs led by Vladimir Putin and his girlfriend Alina Kabaeva tend to use at least corruption issues to attack mainstream traditional parties (Casal Bértoa, 2024), including in Ukraine. The international relationships between Russia and their oligarchs with other countries matter not only because they ran out of the troops so they recruited North Korean soldiers but also they attack everyone who is not in their favour in any countries.
When the political parties come to the center of the political spectrum (Casal Bértoa, 2019) and work together to cover their C4N it's also called Cartelisation. If they work together to empower the poor for example, then normally it's called collaboration (Casal Bértoa, 2024).
Russia and their oligarchs tend to use similar approaches everywhere. For example, when they use Latvia’s empty houses as the phantom voters the indicators are also seen in Indonesia. The political parties will buy any houses in any residential areas for their voters and or partisans, and keep the empty house owners as voters.
The rise of the overused AI marks the tendency of the electoral winning by authoritarians. Russia and their oligarchs at least interrupted the electoral results from the Philippines to Germany. The results tend to have similar trends. It feels like Donnafugata’s election in the Leopard series of Netflix (2025). The mayor announced 521 said yes for them to be united with Italy and 0 said yes when at least one of the voters chose no. It may sound one voice doesn't count but how if the corrupted mayor was actually incorporating the rest of ‘no’ to the ‘yes’ without telling anyone of course. So both digital and manual electoral calculations have weaknesses too.
Discussion
The worst thing about such efforts is when the oligarchs force us to marry someone we don't like simply because they want their part of families e. g. daughters or sons to be married to someone we are deeply fond of. Not to mention, it is also for covering the C4N.
The roles of the oligarchs are easy to identify because they have sources of fundings. Nonetheless it's not in the sources but it's in the ways how the fund is gained, used, and delivered.
They're called oligarchs because the word is derived from Greek meaning a little or few. There are only a few of them in this universe therefore they're called the oligarchs.
Based on the history of money circulation in this political context, the funds they used and delivered to cover C4N tend to also come from the money laundering and large businesses e. g. heavy weapons for wars; beside from the C4N itself. The laundering money is sometimes also part of the C4N money. With the current overuse of AI based businesses of at least illegal fintechs and scammings, it seems undeniable for the oligarchs not to be involved; beside the real estates, plantation, mining, and other businesses related to natural resources.
Conclusion
The soup can't be too hot and can't be even cold (Casal Bértoa, 2019, 2024, 2025). What's the point of being a soup if it's not edible. Like the fuel to the fire itself, understanding democracy means understanding the freedom to even choose whether we want to use MacBook or other brands, for example. The oligarchs seem to tend to force their products on most of us, especially those who are in favour of democracy, whether to cover their C4N or not. Based on Russia and their oligarchs' behaviour lately the motivation is actually very clear, they don't want democracy to win. They want them to win and they want themselves to be called democracy when they're not because as Harmita (2022) summarised democracy, there shouldn't be any forces especially in democracy. Casal Bértoa (...) called it as a freedom to choose. This tiny data note suggests everyone including and especially the oligarchs themselves to understand why they call themselves democracy when they keep forcing us to do what we are not in favour of. The words seem to be flipped and the essence seems to be forgotten.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to say thanks to everyone who keeps hackers who are in favour of the oligarchs stay away from interfering with this data note. This data note would not be written without the unstoppable support from my lovely -soon official to be- husband who has much more experience in writing and publishing scientific articles yet very patient in accompanying me not to give up.
Declaration of Interest Statement
This data note is not funded and doesn't have conflicts of interest.
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