Bumpy road towards democracy

Bumpy road towards democracy

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): Talk about restoring democracy is again
pervading our society. Researchers at the Indonesian Institute of
Sciences, for instance, have argued that the Indonesian Armed
Forces (ABRI) should minimize its political role to allow
democracy to flourish and political reform. They recommended the
military gradually reduce its political role from control to
participation and eventually to a back seat role.

Ruslan Abdulgani, a senior statesman of the 1945 generation,
said in late February that ABRI should not expand its dual
function role to a multifunction one. Such an expansion would
only endanger the Armed Forces' role as the protector of
Indonesia's political stability and security. "ABRI should never
become a tool to steal people's basic and political rights," he
said, because ABRI was not established to oppress and intimidate
the people for political ends.

Understandably, the Armed Forces has rejected such ideas. Two
generals recently declared in a seminar that "ABRI's role in
politics was a 'historical fact' guaranteed by Law". Vice
Marshall Tjokong Tarigan, one of those two high-ranking officers,
maintained that "there is no evidence or indicators that the
military's presence in sociopolitical matters has wrought havoc
on our (political) system." He added that the Armed Forces'
participation in non-defense matters had never been a hurdle to
democracy: the Armed Forces, too, loves democracy, and is
committed to defending it. "Democracy will be left behind only,
when we are on battlefield," he said.

Despite conflicting opinions regarding the political meaning
of the Armed Forces' performance thus far, it can be construed
that no one wants democracy to die in this country. Everyone
wants to defend democracy.

The crucial question in this respect seems to be: What kind of
democracy do we want to foster in our society? The official
answer is, of course, Pancasila democracy. Against this answer we
can ask: How does Pancasila democracy manifest in our daily life?
And where are we now in this regard? At the beginning, in the
middle or at the end?

In this political climate I received an invitation -- which,
to be honest, I found very surprising -- to take part in a
meeting aimed at reexamining our understanding of Pancasila. It
is stated in the memorandum for this meeting that deliberations
to this effect are deemed necessary in light of the oncoming new
era, the third millennium. It is feared that our present
understanding of Pancasila won't suffice as an ideological torch
with which to guide ourselves through the turbulent period
brought about by the onslaught of global economic and political
changes. Without a readable ideological "road map" we can easily
degenerate into a semi-democracy or other lesser forms of
democracy: Cesaristic democracy, delegative democracy, abridged
democracy, etcetera.

The list of questions and problems mentioned in the memorandum
strongly suggests that the organizers are genuinely concerned
with the present state of our democracy. It stresses the need for
a more rational national ideology and the need for a national
leadership that exhibits greater wisdom and greater openness. The
memorandum asks how can we become a modern nation without losing
our character as a pluralistic society and without being impaired
by it. And it reiterates the ideological benchmarks that a
Pancasila state must be a state of the people, and that a
Pancasila political system must be a system which purposely
involves the people's active participation.

Coming from a government advisory office at the highest level
of the bureaucracy, I find this kind of pronouncement very
encouraging. What remains to be seen is whether the format that
it has adopted for redressing our understanding of Pancasila is
congruent with the complex realities of the democratizations that
have taken place in many countries.

We can use several studies to develop an insight into the
nature of democratization. Norbert Lechner from Facultad
Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales in Mexico points out that
democratization is hampered in many Latin American countries by
(economic) modernization. He argues that modernization creates
anonymous markets and the dominance of technocratic
bureaucracies, and this makes society incapable of supporting
vital democracy. The result is semi-democracy in which the state
is trapped between the demand for enhancing the competitiveness
of national economy on the one hand, and the demand for reining
the economy on the other for the sake of safeguarding the
societal bases of democracy.

Samuel Huntington of Harvard University calls the
democratization that has been going on since 1974 the third wave
of democratization. It originated in Southern Europe and moved
later to Latin America and Asia. In general, this democratization
is characterized by the lifting of martial law, expansion of
electoral competition, increasingly vigorous legislative debates
and elimination of press censorship. He points out that besides
having to overcome the old problems of democratization --
communal conflict, foreign war and social decay -- these new
democracies have to face four new threats: that is, "the red
return", antidemocratic ideologies, executive arrogation and
abridgment of political rights and civil liberties by
governments.

The result is, according to Samuel Huntington, that in general
these new democracies tend to become something other than fully
democratic. Citing Larry Diamond he pointed out that out of the
22 new democracies in Latin America, 15 fall into one of the four
intermediate categories: "partially illiberal democracy",
"competitive semi-democracy", "restrictive semi-democracy", and
"semi-competitive partially pluralist authoritarian".

In Asia the choice has been "Asian authoritarianism". This
system has been adopted by South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and
Singapore. Under this system, economic modernization took place
and the ensuing economic prosperity, social order and general
well-being has been fantastic. This makes Singapore's Lee Kuan
Yew's belief that what developing countries need is not
democracy, but discipline. And the validity of this view seems to
be reiterated by Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and most recently
China, which duplicated this system.

One question which has to be answered is: How long can this
system last? Three decades? Two generations? Can it provide good
government for a sustained period of time? To answer these
questions, Huntington reminds us of Reinhold Niehbur, who once
said: "Men's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but
men's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."

How should we understand Pancasila to sustain good governance?
How should this understanding accommodate economic modernization
without sacrificing democracy?

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.