Indonesian democracy: No turning back

Part 1 of 2

Satish Mishra, Chief Economist, UNSFIR/UNDP, Jakarta

All adult Indonesians who choose to do so go to the polls today to elect a new House of Representatives,the Council of Regional Representatives and local legislatures at provincial, regency and municipal levels.

They will again exercise their voting rights in May and possibly in September to elect a new president and vice president.

In such a historic expression of the people's will, it is worth thinking about what we should vote for and what we should vote against. The way we chose will determine the course of Indonesia's future over the coming decade or more. The reason is simple. The coming elections represent an important next step in the consolidation of Indonesia's young and fragile democracy. We are not used to such open elections.

Over the last thirty or more years we have grown used to letting our civil servants, our commanders or our community leaders do the thinking for us. Now we have to take our future in our own hands. It is time to begin thinking and choosing for ourselves.

This is not easy. The long economic crisis has greatly eroded our self confidence. It has changed our view of our selves. Only yesterday, the world was praising our economic growth and development. Foreign money and foreign businesses were flooding into the country. We were being held up as a model for other developing countries to emulate.

Today, our large businesses are close to bankrupt, our banks remain in distress, our workers out of jobs. An entire generation of our young are threatened by a life time of economic insecurity.

Democratic elections however confer not just a right but also a responsibility. That responsibility is the duty of every citizen to think in terms of the public interest, to play a part in providing a national mandate by which the country should be governed.

In times of crisis and urgency, it is not only the leaders who must play a part in implementing sensible policies and in containing the eruption of social violence. The citizen must also guide the leadership and help to ensure that public institutions remain open and honest. The democratic political system is a partnership of state and the citizen. It is neither just citizen, nor is it just state.

Despite a sharp decline in national self confidence both State and Citizen, must accept the historical responsibility that the collapse of the former political system has placed on us. We must think about what to do next. And we must think of it together.

Climbing out of the abyss of a national crisis involves two essential skills, the ability to learn from the past and the ability to look into the future. We need to do the first to avoid repeating expensive mistakes. We need the second to avoid mistakes yet to come. Both are important in building a new Indonesia. Let us begin with the lessons of history.

The Indonesian national liberation struggle was founded on the belief that Indonesians had a right to self government. That meant a belief that all Indonesians, and not just the privileged few, had a right to have a voice in constructing the new post- independence Indonesia. This was a powerful emotion. Many died for it. In the end they succeeded. Indonesia was free. The liberation spirit dominated immediate post-independence politics.

Yet the passion that brought down the Dutch empire could not, left to itself, build the foundations of effective government. Governing institutions remained weak. The economy faltered. Social and political divisions could not be kept in check. The result in 1965 was the collapse of the regime and the death of thousands of Indonesian citizens.

The New Order was borne out of a fear of disorder. It played down the liberation spirit and built a powerful state. Political life was circumscribed. Attention was diverted to bread not freedom. Economic growth was heralded as the key to political legitimacy. Growth was to be driven by stability, order and a consensus imposed from above. The system proclaimed itself to be rooted in Indonesian culture and psyche. In a tragic reversal of history, it was assumed that most Indonesians preferred obedience to self-determination.

The obsession with order and control on the one hand and the greed unleashed by economic growth at any cost, on the other, led to a hollowing out of key national institutions. Private business dominated public life. ABRI, a renowned national institution which had contributed so much to national independence was both robbed of adequate funding and infected with the divided loyalties of political management.

Centers of higher learning were turned into establishments of state ideology. The judiciary, normally a keeper of laws and an independent arbiter of disputes, was used to turn the scales of justice in the favor of the economically and politically powerful. The civil "service", turned it self into a secret conclave of technical specialists far removed from those that it was expected to serve.

To be sure, the New Order System, as have dictatorships in many parts of the world, did, for a time, deliver high economic growth. For a while it was also lucky. In its first decade, oil prices rocketed. The sharp increase in government revenue helped consolidate the new political system. Early growth was also labor intensive. It was driven by the green revolution and by the emergence of labor intensive textile production. Labor moved from the village to the city. People got jobs even if wages remained low.

On the whole, economic growth gave much to the few. It gave very little to the many. Despite high economic growth for over two decades the lives of the majority of our people barely hovered over absolute subsistence. Relative priorities given to programs which benefited the poor: In education, health and sanitation remained well below even less well off neighboring countries.

In other ways too, economic growth came at a heavy price. It was the product of a system of governance which had turned personal greed into public policy. It stifled initiative and creativity. It saw obedience to the authoritarian state the prime civic virtue and thus robbed the political system of a means of public criticism and correction.

At the end of the day, the New Order collapsed like a large and familiar tree, strong and everlasting from the outside but hollow and weak from the inside.

The lesson is clear. The liberation spirit which had brought Indonesia its independence could not be ignored for ever. Its power was seen in the first wave of Reformasi which ended Soeharto's long rule. Times of economic shock often bring about changes in government.

In Indonesia, however, they brought about the collapse of an entire socio-political system. Clearly, under the New Order the pendulum had swung too far. The State was given primacy over citizen. Growth, not freedom, became the source of political legitimacy. It was not a contract which the Indonesian people were willing to accept for ever.

This article does not represent the views of UNSFIR, UNDP or any other UN organization. The views expressed here are strictly personal.