Expert renews call for morality in politics

People are still yearning for quality leadership a year after President Abdurrahman Wahid was installed. The following is an excerpt from an interview with political historian Azyumardi Azra who recently launched his book Islam Substantif: Agar Umat Tidak Jadi Buih (Substantive Islam: Ensuring the Ummah Never Become Flotsam).

Question: Abdurrahman Wahid is approaching the first anniversary of his presidency. You have disagreed with the suggestion that Indonesia is currently 'governmentless' but how about 'nongovernance'?

Answer: I would say so. I don't think we can say 'governmentless' as we do have a government, but an ineffective one due to a number of factors. The first is friction between the old political forces with the nascent, not yet solidified, new political force.

Among the old political forces is the Indonesian Military (TNI) which still tends to maintain its old political privileges. There's a reluctance to follow through with its recently stated repositioning. On the other hand, some of the new political forces still hang on to TNI, as proven by their success in ensuring that the military stay on in the legislature until 2009.

The second cause to our ineffective government is Gus Dur (Abdurrahman) who has yet to show his leadership, as seen in his inclination to take on controversial issues and policies. The second proof of his lack of leadership is his tendency to ignore standing administrative procedures.

As an individual, Gus Dur can become as egalitarian and accessible to the public as he wishes, but he should also mind the procedures and not bypass people.

We can see how many problems have emerged because he has neglected procedures. The controversies surrounding the replacement of the police chief, for instance, were a matter of procedure and not the substance of the matter.

These all affect the government's effectiveness, which in turn affects the effectiveness of other organizations such as law enforcers, the military, the supreme court and others. We can see how minimal law enforcement has been over the past year.

Your suggestion for the President?

Gus Dur has no grand strategies in two important fields: economic and politics. Because of his personalized style, he tends to adopt ad hoc and incremental policies, but not clear strategies.

He does not have clear programs for economic recovery. His wish to develop democratization is something that we all support, but often the steps he takes are counterproductive to that aim.

One last thing I wish to note about Gus Dur is his recent challenge that legislators hold a special session of the People's Consultative Assembly in which he could be removed if the legislature was dissatisfied with his answers about two financial scandals. That is his right, but surely his response is out of proportion because this could be a bad precedent.

What if a succession takes place in that special session? We have always had "abnormal" successions. Soeharto replaced (founding president) Sukarno in an abnormal way, B.J. Habibie replaced Soeharto in similarly abnormal way.

When Gus Dur was elected last year, we reached a milestone where we laid a firm foundation for democratization. Now if Gus Dur is replaced in such an abnormal way, it would be a bad precedent for our democratization.

What's your view on Muslims' place in the political decision making process?

Indonesian Muslims are the majority suffering from a minority complex. We are dominant in number but not in decision making processes.

Now our biggest challenge is how to contribute to development commensurate to our numbers. This depends very much on the Muslim leaders. We have national top leaders from among the santri (Muslim scholars) such as Gus Dur and Amien Rais, but when it comes to decision-making these leaders are still entangled in campaigns to further their own group's narrow interests.

Your arguments to support that statement?

We can judge this from the conflicts arising in the top layers of the national leadership. The use of paramilitary groups such as Banser and Pam Swakarsa in their conflicts does not encourage a good climate for the institutional development (of Indonesian politics.)

Really, those santri leaders should refrain from using physical and psychological pressure (in solving conflicts). Rather they should display stances that support democratization.

The use of paramilitary groups is certainly not exclusive to Muslims.

No, of course not. Many other groups have them, and call it by different names. The PDI Perjuangan, for instance, have a task force (Satgas PDI). This phenomenon is a cause for concern because it is counterproductive to our wish for democratization.

Muslims should empower themselves by developing political parties (rather than developing such paramilitary groups).

Now your concept about substantive Islam.

What I mean by that is the actualization of Islamic values -- which stand as universal such as Al-'adalah (justice), Al-musawa (egalitarianism), respect and tolerance -- into political programs.

There are many substantive concepts in Islam which should become the soul of political activism. This is substantive Islam.

In Indonesia, what we need now is a political morality which is actualized into people's lives. Because of their majority, the position of Muslims becomes very important.

For instance, if Muslims practice political ahlak (good conduct), than many of our problems can be solved. (swe)