Do we really have a crisis of national leadership?

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): Do the leaders of this nation have the ability to lead the country out of the present economic and political crises? Will they be able to use the power entrusted to them to impel their respective followers into collective action to pull the country out of the present economic and political quagmire?

I have asked these questions many times, and I am never sure if I know the answer. Every time I want so much to believe that somehow we will be able to cure ourselves from our various disorders and affections. But then, every time, the stark reality around me tells me that we have not made the slightest progress in this respect, and that our condition has been worsening steadily.

What is wrong with our leaders and their leadership? And what is wrong with us as followers?

According to James MacGregor Burns, "leadership is nothing if not linked to collective purpose." This is, perhaps, one axiom that we can use to identify the sources of our present leadership crisis.

What is our collective purpose?

Within the context of our current reform movement I think it is the restoration and further cultivation of democracy, eradication of corruption, collusion and nepotistic practices, and restoration of respect toward the law. Do our leaders genuinely try to lead us toward this direction?

Not every one of them, I think. Some of our leaders have, through their various acts and pronouncements, created the impression that they are not really pursuing this collective purpose, but that they are moving in the opposite direction.

Instead of fighting against nepotism and cronyism, they are practicing and reinforcing these two evils. Instead of restoring democracy, they are acting in a repressive manner. Instead of fighting corruption, they close their eyes to the ongoing corruption, or even take part in some of them.

I think it is primarily the presence of these types of leaders that makes us unable to move definitively in the direction of genuine reform.

Why does this happen? Because we have no guiding concepts concerning leader and leadership. According to MacGregor Burns, the lack of such knowledge causes us to be unable to "make the vital distinctions between types of leaders".

The absence of knowledge concerning the foundation of leaders and leadership makes us unable to "distinguish leaders from rulers, from power wielders, and from despots". He went further by saying that in the worst case, the absence of such knowledge will cause us to be unable to tell the difference between leader and "tyrant", who he defines as a person who after gaining power will crush all opposition.

It is time that we examine more critically the pronouncements and actions of those who claim to be leaders of this nation. We must eliminate irresponsible or mediocre people from our list of national leaders. We must examine carefully the various styles of leadership exemplified by our leaders and decide which one to follow and which one we shall disregard.

What we need during this period of reform is leaders who have the ability to guide us toward collective actions that will transform our society from the present chaotic condition to an orderly and more humane one. The ideal type of leadership for this purpose is, according to MacGregor Burns again, "transforming leadership", which he defines as a leadership in which the leader recognizes the needs or demands of the followers, identifies the potential motives of the followers, seeks to satisfy higher needs, and engages the full person of the followers.

Before we proceed to identify leaders with this type of leadership, however, we must first pay attention to Burns' caution concerning the true meaning of "leadership". He writes that leadership is the opposite of brute power, and that leadership is also distinct from mere power-holding. Based on this clarification, we can start identifying pseudo-leaders among the myriad of people who claim to be "leaders of the reform movement".

Another type of leadership identified by Burns is "transactional leadership". In this type of leadership, "leaders approach followers with an eye to exchanging one thing for another", for example money and or organizational positions in exchange of support or votes. According to Burns, such transactions comprise the bulk of relationships among leaders and followers within political parties, legislative bodies, and corporate organizations.

I think we can use this classification of leadership by Burns as our guide in our present condition. We can conclude, I think, that if we really want to pull ourselves out of our present muddy condition, we have to be selective in our choice of leaders.

We must first realize that we are free to select our leaders. We do not have to accept government bureaucrats, or even ministers, as our leaders.

I think here lies one of our mistakes. We have always assumed, thus far, that high-ranking bureaucrats, ministers, and military generals are national leaders and that we have to take their words seriously and follow their directives faithfully.

Such people have power, yes, but the possession of power alone does not automatically make one a leader. It can also make one, as Burns points out, a despot or a tyrant. And I do not think that there is any sane Indonesian among us who wants to have a despot or a tyrant as our leader.

If we relate Burns' classification of leadership to Galbraith's classification of power, we can conclude, I think, that transforming leaders rely primarily on conditioned power in their efforts to guide their followers move toward collectively aspired goals.

Transactional leaders, on the other hand, rely mainly on compensatory power to win support from their followers. And pseudo-leaders -- despots and tyrants -- rely heavily on consign power to coerce others become their "followers".

It is really up to us, and not only to our leaders, whether we shall continue our efforts to build a democratic society and clean it from corruption, collusion, nepotism and cronyism, or whether we will accept the present condition as the end of our journey toward an abortive reform.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.