Federal system best way to end separatism issue

In recent weeks the nation has seen the awakening of separatist aspirations in a number of locations, including in Irian Jaya. Catholic priest-cum-novelist-cum-architect-cum-social worker Y.B. Mangunwijaya believes that creating a United States of Indonesia is the answer to these problems.

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Papua New Guinea patriots have openly demanded freedom. The demand was made without fear in the center of Jakarta. Had they done so in Jayapura or Biak they would have been shot dead.

Gubernare est previdere et providere, goes an ancient Roman saying. Have a forward vision and make appropriate arrangements. Understand the signs of the time, please, and weigh the natural consequences of 30 years of Soeharto's iron-fist security and self-censoring fear.

In the 1950s a unified state with a firm centralized rule was necessary to confront our former colonial masters. Even during the years of economic growth from 1965 onwards, a centralized state was a prudent and appropriate superstructure for the country. But the iron rule of Soeharto since that time was too cruel to bear. Fascistic methods became all too common and the further you traveled from Jakarta the more common Nazi SS-style practices became.

Wisdom and courage are required to learn from the ancient principle of Roman statesmanship lex agendi lex essendi, the law of action is the law of doing.

A peaceful and democratic centralized government can rule a nation of five million people. But for a similar governing institution to rule a huge and heterogeneous mass is impossible, unless it resorts to the language of violence. Is that really what we want?

Even the late president Sukarno himself, as chairman of the Committee for the Independence of Indonesia, declared to the Central National Committee of Indonesia (an embryonic Indonesian parliament) on Aug. 18, 1945, that the proposed Constitution was a: "...somewhat tentative Constitution, a lightning Constitution, or you could call it, a revolutionary Constitution. Later we should make a Constitution which is more complete."

Thus the 1945 Constitution was not meant to last forever.

A nation with such a diversity of people, spread as they are across an area larger than Europe, can only develop in a democratic fashion if a decentralized state becomes a reality.

The young generation, who will guide our republic in the 21st century, need explicit guarantees to protect their basic human rights and this would best be served by a federal framework for the state.

But do the young generation demand federalism?

Yes, the concerned and the committed do.

They never knew Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta. They cannot appreciate the enormous difficulties which they both had to face. They did not experience first hand the heady rush of excitement as Indonesia took its first tentative steps as a free and democratic nation. The young generation only know what they have been taught about Sukarno in the New Order's brainwashing Pancasila courses.

Although our young generation did not taste the early joys of independence for themselves they have experienced the New Order regime at first hand.

They are now fed up with great leaders, corrupt authoritarian bureaucrats and threatening generals with their one-way command over a centralized state and society. Indonesia Incorporated.

They don't want another big leader. Gadjah Mada University rector Dr. Ichlasul Amal pointed to the very heart of the matter when he said in a seminar some time ago that: "the new generation is basically federalist".

The 1950s required unity and so a strongly centralized state was created. However in seeking a model for the state as we approach the 21st century I would like to draw your attention to the famous message of our great democrat and independence fighter Mohammad Hatta, who knew his own people's character very well. He warned against the wrong kind of unity when he said: "We too struggle for persatuan (unity), that's why we reject persatean (being stuck together like meat on sate skewers).

So, if we earnestly wish to stay away from a wave of separatism started by our Papua brothers; if we don't want to imitate a crumbling Yugoslavia, with ethnic divisions widened by the ambition to create a Greater Serbia, or Greater Java for that matter, then we should stop and think. We should ask if a government which greedily sucks the wealth from the outer regions of our country is really the best way to organize Indonesian society in the 21st century.

If the answer to this question is no then we must prepare -- through studies, seminars, discussions, discourses and the drafting of a wise and strong Constitution -- to build a country that will genuinely suit the needs of Indonesians in the 21st century.

We must prepare to build a United States of Indonesia.