Archipelagic Indonesia: Land of infinite promise

Tan Chee Leng, Senior Researcher, Centre for Political Studies, Jakarta

More than 30 years ago, notable anthropologist Clifford Geertz described Indonesia as "a country which, unable to find a political form appropriate to the temper of its people, stumbles on apprehensively from one contrivance to the next." The term "contrivance" is quite improper. We shall call it "democratic project". Still, Geertz's point is very salient here and begs the question: Just how do you go about "finding a political form appropriate to the temper of its people?

And one might well further ask: Just how do you take the temper of a people as diverse as Indonesians? The last time an Indonesian leader attempted to do so, it led to the cataclysmic event of 1965-1966.

Indonesia has been undergoing democratic transitions since the birth of the republic: The transition to Guided Democracy with first president Sukarno and the Army as principal architects, the transition to Pancasila Democracy with Soeharto, the Army, and American trained technocrats as principal architects. The failure of the attempts at nurturing democracy in this country must hold sobering lessons indeed, as Indonesia embarks once again on yet another democratic transition since the fall of Soeharto in 1998.

It has been more than four years in what must be the longest democratic transition in Indonesian history: The current democratic project is still very much a work-in-progress. "But we are getting there," said an Indonesian scholar.

This article is prompted by comments made by two Indonesian brothers, one Indonesian politician and an Australian ex-diplomat in an edition of the Far Eastern Economic Review (Oct. 10).

Andi Mallarangeng, secretary-general of the new National Democratic Unity Party, said "We have to show that it is possible to develop a modern party based on issues." The magazine article then counterposed Andi's comment with the remark of his brother, Rizal, "Indonesian people don't change that much. Political loyalties stay basically the same," said Rizal, executive director of the Freedom Institute who frequently writes the President's speeches.

How would a concerned scholar anxious that Indonesia gets this democratic transition right go about deigning the temper of Indonesian people by first deciphering the temper of two brothers with such contrasting perspectives on whom their people are? And then there is the comment by the Australian ex-diplomat Kevin Evans: "Avoid the issues. Personalities, emotional attachments and broad ideological principles remain more important than a 'middle-class fetish' to campaign on issues. Stick to a populist script."

This is an Australian who has had six years of diplomatic experience in Jakarta, speaks the local language fluently and is rather thoroughly Indonesianized. So, his pithy comments cannot be casually dismissed.

So, broadly speaking, there are two approaches here on how the political parties would campaign the 2004 direct presidential elections. In the possible absence of the all-powerful People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) to decide the presidency, mass-based politics would dictate the tempo of electoral campaign.

The proverbial genie would be let out of the bottle and mutate in either the benign or malign form, depending on whether the political parties here emphasize on rational issues-based policy platforms or play on primordial loyalties.

Let us hope so. This is not to say that the issues are not in themselves emotive. They clearly are. The key is to find a non- emotive channel with which to express differences of opinion. Televised debate of presidential candidates is one possible way of doing it.

One would hope that the current democratic project which the Indonesians are now crafting tends toward the development of modern and inclusive political parties with policy agendas that set clear directions for this nation of infinite promise, given its vast natural and human resources. In the end, a properly- functioning politic comes down to good governance.

And that is vitally linked to how the Machiavellian (the term is used here in the good sense) is educated: Professionally for the state of his nation and morally for the soul of his nation. The test case here is whether the public would be well-served by their governance. For the masses at large, there is no better way to determine that than to watch televised debates among those presidential aspirants who claim to represent their aspirations before they cast their vote to determine the fate of their country.

Any political leader attempting to take the pulse and temper of his people must note the Rousseau distinction between "the general will" and "the will of all." It is the difference between "judgment about the common good" versus the "mere aggregate of personal fancies and individual desires." The Indonesian statesman who best understands this Rousseau distinction was the late former vice president Mohamad Hatta who noted the difference between cabinet persatuan (unity) and persatean (divisions into small pieces like pieces of meat roasted on skewer). When the cabinet, which supposedly leads the nation, is not united as one singular force advancing the national interest, how can the country advance as one united people? That was Hatta's principal concern.

As has been said earlier said, this must be the longest democratic transition yet, especially as no government, from Habibie onward, has been in power long enough.

They have all been interim governments in a sense, not yet a regime that, according to the philosopher Leo Strauss, is "the order, the form that gives society its character." So far, the only regimes that Indonesians have tasted have been the Sukarno and Soeharto versions.

Let us hope better versions await the future of Indonesia.