ABRI's persistence

ABRI's persistence

From Republika

The Armed Forces' (ABRI) persistence in maintaining a presence in the People's Consultative Assembly/House of Representatives as well as their dual function role is very impressive. In fact, the appointment of ABRI's representatives to the legislative body is convincingly contradictory to the 1945 Constitution and contrary to the principles of democracy. Also, its dual function role has become a much debated issue lately. The people are, in general, of the view that ABRI should return to its basic task, i.e., to defend the state. The perseverance of ABRI to stay in the legislature reminds me of the development of technology written by Armahedi Mahzar in his introductory remarks of the book Teknologi Dalam Sejarah Islam (Technology in Islamic History, [Mizan, 1993]).

The summary of the story is as follows:

In the beginning, technology is a small tool which serves as an extension of a man's hand. It helps the man in his work. And being a tool, it succumbs to man's will. It does not have its own power and it works only with the help of the man. Therefore, we can call such a tool a suborganism. We take for example a knife.

A man then develops technology, building a machine consisting of a number of tools arranged in such a way that it can be more beneficial to mankind. Thus, the machine is no longer an extension of the man's hand but has become an extension of the man's body as a whole. At this stage, not only the tool has to be adapted to the man but the man must adapt himself to the tool. This applies primarily when a machine has a source of energy not of man, such as a horse cart. This combination of man, animal and machine creates a new organism called a paraorganism.

After a time, the engine will change into a machine. This happens when the engine gets a source of energy which is nonorganic, such as water, air, wind or fire (fuel). At this stage, the machine can work without too much energy from man. The more sophisticated the machine, the less intervention of man is needed. Now the machines are almost similar to natural organisms, hence they can be called semiorganisms. Then, these semiorganisms multiply with the help of man. They gets more sophisticated by combining them, also with the help of man, to become groups of machines that cannot be controlled by just one man but by a group of well-organized men. In this case the semiorganism changes into supraorganism the size of which exceeds the man-organism.

When the technology is in the suborganism stage, it serves as a loyal servant to man. In the paraorganism stage, it changes into a friend of man. As a semiorganism, it is no longer a friend but has become a foe to be conquered. In the supraorganism stage, it becomes an entity very similar to a master, that must be very carefully managed to always benefit mankind. Failure in this strategy and man will inevitably become a servant of technology.

So technology keeps developing with the ages, which is quite evident from practical life. Whether this technological development can be analogized with development experienced by the Armed Forces depends on our individual interpretation and evaluation.

But we only have one hope: that whatever the case, technology must benefit the whole people and democracy as mandated in the 1945 Constitution.

SUHELMI NURUSMAN

Jakarta