Government urged to change attitude towards people

JAKARTA (JP): A senior political scientist is calling on the government to change the way it deals with the people, saying that the present attitude has failed to truly promote the social, economic and political standing of the masses.

Loekman Soetrisno, of Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University, said the relationship between the state and the people must be restructured to give the majority of the people better access to economic resources.

"The ignoble social, economic and political standing of the majority of the Indonesian people, if not dealt with quickly and properly, will cause a social calamity which cannot be prevented by any force whatsoever," he said Monday night at a discussion to reflect on 50 years of Indonesian independence.

Loekman pointed at the doleful political and economical situation that masses of people are still subjected to after 50 years.

Participants in the discussion, titled The place of the People in the Republic: Reflecting on 50-years of Indonesian Independence, were empathic towards people whom they felt were still neglected despite the economic fruits of development.

Loekman said that although the Constitution places the people in the highest standing, reality often proves otherwise.

"If the people's standing in the state is that important, then we should ask ourselves why the people can still be brutalized by the authorities, such as the case of Nipah Dam in Madura," he said, referring to the deaths of several villagers during a protest against the expropriation of their land by the government in 1993.

Loekman reproached the argument commonly stated that the lack of economic and political democracy in Indonesia is chiefly caused by the low quality of human resources in Indonesia.

He pointed to the pre-Dutch colonial era when local industries thrived throughout the country.

These industries, he said, failed during the colonial period because the people were subjected to a system designed to exploit them as cheap labor for the Dutch plantations.

Loekman attributed the failure of the present government to improve the standing of the people to three factors.

The first is the transformation of "development" into an ideology-like dogma which defeats all interests standing in the way.

In the name of development, common people who have lived and worked in the forests for generations are thus forced to relinquish their land to forest concessionaires, he said citing an example.

Secondly, the government has adopted an attitude where it can do no wrong.

"This perception manifests itself in the government's unwillingness to accept criticism from below...along with the absence of a tradition to apologize if its policies are wrong or harmful to the common people," he said.

Legal

The third is the lack of legal certainty, something which he attributed to the constant government interference in the judicial body. "Such is the level of intrusion that it creates a perception among the people that the judicial institution sides more with the government rather than being a neutral and objective court," he argued.

Another case he cited is the regulation requiring people to obtain permits from the authorities to hold any gathering that involves more than five persons.

Legislator Fadel Muhammad as a speaker in the discussion said it was time to empower the people in various areas.

"Empowering the people is a means to increase their participation in the decision making process, whether it is on a national decision or even those that affect them directly," he said during the discussion organized by the Young Indonesia Forum, the New Indonesia Foundation and Sinergi Kalam Council.

Fadel, who is also one of Indonesia's leading entrepreneurs, explained that such empowerment is a basic principal of political and economic democracy which should be fully implemented. (mds)