ABRI and democracy

ABRI and democracy

In his address on Armed Forces Day, President Soeharto
emphasized that the future development of the Armed Forces (ABRI)
would always be realized in the larger framework of the nation's
and the country's development. In that context the President said
that ABRI's role in security and defense matters and in social
and political affairs would still be needed in the future.

The advent of the era of information and communication has
prompted an even greater acceleration in the processes of
openness and democratization. On the international plane this is
what has sparked demands for improvements and democratization in
the United Nations, as expressed by the 10th Non-Aligned Movement
Summit in Jakarta in September 1992. On the regional level,
nation states, either individually, or on the basis of their
group affiliations, are insisting on more democratic plans for
cooperation on the basis of partnership and equality of status.

In the meantime, within each individual country, developments
also require that the democratization process be assured based on
the concepts and value systems that prevail. This phenomenon,
which is becoming increasingly global in scale, also causes a
growing interaction between various types of democracy with each
nation striving to reap the greatest possible benefit from this
process.

In our view it is in this context that ABRI's social-political
role can act as a dynamizing force, not only to push forward and
to stabilize the democratization process in all spheres of life,
but to protect it from practices that could turn democracy into
anarchy.

-- Suara Karya, Jakarta