ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the 'charming' inevitability of democracy is part of a Hegelian tradition that needs the notion of 'spirit' to posit the universality of freedom, yet has trouble evacuating that which haunts this spirit. The political process of administrative decentralization and devolution of power after 1999 led to a host of new administrative sub-districts, districts and provinces. Pak Muhammad's illness in 2003 occurred in an atmosphere that was brimming with both anxiety and optimism. From there he hoped, provided the PPP did well in the elections, to advance to the position of Speaker of the Regional Parliament (DPRD) at the district level. Sorcery is a social practice that, as Bruce Kapferer notes, is enabled by the fundamental unknowability of the human other Democratic politics and conflict in North Maluku have meant not a diminishing, but a reconstitution of the reality of sorcery, fighting magic and protective magic.
