How sacred is the unitary state of RI?

J. Soedjati Djiwandono, Political Analyst, Jakarta

Just a little over a year after the proclamation of Indonesian independence, Prime Minister Sutan Syahrir signed the Linggardjati agreement with the Dutch on Nov. 15, 1946. Article (1) of the agreement says, "The Netherlands Government recognizes the Republic as the de facto authority in Java and Sumatra." Article (2) of the agreement says, inter alia, that "The Netherlands Government and Republican Governments co-operate toward the setting up of a sovereign democratic federal state, the United States of Indonesia..."

That was an initial part of Sutan Syahrir's brilliant diplomatic efforts to gain international recognition for Indonesian independence.

Under the circumstances, he had no choice but to agree to what, at that moment, was thought to be the most we could get. It almost cost his prime ministership but for Sukarno's and Mohammad Hatta's full backing of his policy.

Surely the Linggardjati agreement was never meant to be something final.

Nor was the "final" agreement reached at the Round Table Conference in The Hague near the end of 1949, which led to the transfer of sovereignty from the Dutch to the new United Republic of Indonesia, envisaged by the Linggardjati agreement.

Barely a year later, the federal republic was dissolved and replaced by the unitary republic of Indonesia that has lasted to the present.

The (new) unitary republic that had substituted the federation was based on a provisional constitution. Hence the significance of the general election of 1955 for a new parliament and a constitutional assembly to determine a new constitution. This is important to remember.

The assembly was not to confirm the 1945 Constitution, which was itself a provisional one. Therefore, before amendments in the present "era of reform", it contained provisional and supplementary provisions. Article (2), of the latter, provided that "Within six months after the People's Consultative Assembly has been formed, the People's Consultative Assembly shall convene to enact the Constitution."

That was never done, even after the Constitutional Assembly was dissolved by then President Sukarno's decree of July 5, 1959 for its failure to enact a new constitution. The decree not only dissolved the Constitutional Assembly and newly elected Parliament, but it also decreed the return to the 1945 Constitution -- still a provisional constitution.

Under the prevailing circumstances in Indonesia near the end of the 1950s, Sukarno's action to declare a return to the 1945 Constitution, including a unitary state, was presumably justified. It was an emergency situation. The point is that the unitary state on the basis of the provisional constitution of 1950 -- as clear from the term "provisional" -- was ever meant to be final. Nor was the ("new") unitary state on the basis of the 1945 Constitution, the return to which was decreed by Sukarno. And as was indicated earlier, the 1945 Constitution was also a provisional one.

Here lies a mystery of Soeharto's New Order. From the very beginning, the New Order based its legitimacy on its "total correction" to Sukarno's deviations from the 1945 Constitution. Ironically, it continued to claim the 1945 Constitution as its basis, a constitution decreed by President Sukarno, which was never confirmed by a series of People's Consultative Assemblies of Soeharto's own creation over three decades, and which the New Order claimed to adhere "purely and consistently", again despite the fact that it was a provisional constitution.

Is this also to be a final constitution? Did not our founding fathers argue long before independence on what should constitute the boundaries of an independent Indonesia? Did not Sukarno and Hatta differ on whether or not West Irian should be part of independent Indonesia?

Did our founding fathers also envisage the integration of East Timor, which the Indonesian governments since Soeharto used to affirm that the integration of East Timor was final and therefore as a domestic affair of ours not negotiable?

This analysis is not meant to be against a unitary state as such, and neither for nor against a federal state. As a matter of principle, however, it is against, and strongly so, the imposition of anything by the central government on the people, against the wishes of the people, backed by lies and false arguments, at the expense of justice.

After all, the nation-state is never an end in itself. And demands for justice should not be overlooked amid the obsession to defend the unitary state at all costs.

In his speech on Aug. 17, 1950 broadcast on radio, the precise date the Unitary Republic of Indonesia was re-established, Prime Minister Mohammad Hatta said, "the unitary state is not a magic key to open the gate to a better welfare. It is merely a means to facilitate combined efforts, to pave the way for improved welfare."

He also said he did not "call traitors those who from the outset have striven for Indonesian independence, but have chosen a different path. In their view, that path was the best to attain an independent Indonesia."

President Sukarno often referred to Ernest Renan's concept of nationhood. But Renan's idea was simply a speculative, metaphysical and intellectual construct rather than a theory based on empirical evidence to explain or to understand the phenomenon of nationhood.

As far as Indonesia is concerned, it seems arguable if the nation of Indonesia was promoted, in line with Renan's conceptualization, as "a soul, spiritual principle", or "a great solidarity, created by the sentiment of the sacrifices which have been made of those which one is disposed to make in the future. It presupposes a past; but it resumes itself in the present by a tangible fact: the consent, the clearly expressed desire to continue life in common".

The fact, however, is that for a period of over a century, intermittent but isolated revolts by different regions of the then Netherlands East Indies against Dutch colonial rule were never successful.

Perhaps this bitter experience finally made Indonesia leaders of the time realize that only a united and concerted struggle by all the peoples throughout the territory would be able to oust the colonial ruler. Hence the growth of an awareness of the need for a new all-embracing and all-inclusive nation. The Indonesian nation was thus born primarily out of a pragmatic, practical consideration. Sukarno's recourse to Ernest Renan seems to have been an effort to justify that need and to give it a rational and intellectual foundation.

Indeed, Indonesia as a nation was at the beginning fostered in the face of a common enemy: Dutch colonial rule that had created injustice. It was glued together by a common cause: the demand for justice, and thus the demand for independence as a means to that end. Other things being equal, injustice under one's own government is worse than under foreign rule, especially now that justice has been truly and miserably lacking.

Indonesia as a nation was at the beginning fostered in the face of a common enemy: Dutch colonial rule that had created injustice. It was glued together by a common cause: The demand for justice, and thus the demand for independence as a means to that end. Other things being equal, injustice under one's own government is worse than under foreign rule, especially now that justice has been truly and miserably lacking.