Centralization major threat to unity

With the 70th Anniversary of the nation's Youth Pledge coming up on Wednesday in the midst of a severe crisis threatening national unity, The Jakarta Post asked H.S. Dillon to comment on the current state of the Indonesian nation-state. In addition to being an expert in agricultural trade and development, Dillon is a leader of the Forum for the Fostering of National Unity (Bakom PKB).

Question: The 70th Anniversary of the 1928 Youth Pledge is close at hand, what do you think it means to the youth of today?

Dillon: I don't really know what it means to our youth, but I fear that we have betrayed our founding fathers (and mothers, too) by not keeping the flames of national unity alive. Our students no longer have much faith in us, the elite.

They see us all as conspirators, who allowed the Soeharto regime to abuse its power for so long.

They might remember it as a date they had to memorize in their history classes, but I'm not sure that the spirit of '28 dwells in the hearts of our youth. And we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Q: What is its present-day relevance?

D: All generations serve their historical purposes, and besides introducing new elements into society, they are also torch bearers. The '28 generation inherited the "new consciousness of identity" from the '08 generation, and formalized it in the pledge of one country, one people, and one language. They formed the basis for the struggle for independence, which gave birth to the '45 generation.

These founders realized that we had a common enemy: colonial exploitation. Now, the crisis has exposed all the faults within our system, I hope all of us now realize that the more we act in concert the quicker our recovery will be.

Today, we too have common enemies: greed and insensitivity on the apart of our leaders and bureaucrats along with the merciless vagaries of global capitalism.

Q: You seem to be coming down very hard on our leaders; surely they are doing their best to get us out of the crisis. Could you explain your position?

D: I am just expressing a view shared by many. Our leaders have been very cavalier in dealing with our most vulnerable groups. It is a disgrace that foreigners have to point out the casualties and demand that the government focus on alleviating their suffering.

In a period when millions of households have lost their means of livelihood, the government has actually increased rice prices.

The manner in which they have been making appointments, formulating policy, and issuing political statements is more reminiscent of the authoritarian Soeharto regime. All the icons of a unified nation-state -- the polity, the army, and bureaucracy -- will have to abandon their old ways before I could begin to trust them.

Q: Could you be more specific, please?

D: Actually, we need the full support of all our people to get out of this crisis. Despite the fact that the previous regime's divide-and-rule policies have threatened to split the country apart, our leaders are demonstrating even more blatant factionalism.

This is not the time to blame ethnic groups for the country's ills. If anything, blame should be placed on the elite which abetted and benefited from the centralization under Soeharto rule.

When I talk of centralization, I mean the tendency to collect everything around yourself, your followers, and your cronies -- in all walks of life. If Speaker O'Neill used to say that all politics is local, now it appears that all politics is primordial. And this driving us further apart.

Q: You are identifying yourself with a group of "concerned citizens" that wish to distance themselves from the bureaucracy. What is it that you are really after?

D: We want a much stronger, more unified Indonesia emerging from the crisis. What we want to feel is a need to learn from our mistakes, and to forge a new national consensus.

We should strive for a national leadership that cherishes plurality. We see this as a time for healing rather than continuing to inflict new wounds.

We would like to rekindle the flames of unity that brought our youth together in 1928, so that our youth do not lose faith in the future of our nation.