Indonesia's democratic tug-of-war

Indonesia's democratic tug-of-war

The following is the second of two articles based on a
presentation by Dr. Ignas Kleden of The Go-East
Institute/Institute for East-Indonesian Affairs in Jakarta. The
sociologist spoke at the Asian Leadership Fellow Program Reunion
Conference 2001 in Bangkok on Aug. 7.

JAKARTA: Those who wanted to see Abdurrahman Wahid toppled
were those who felt uneasy with the freedom he showed in dealing
with the institutional set-up and bureaucracy. He was seen as
someone who disturbed the quasi-mechanistic equilibrium of
democratic institutions through his maneuvers and improvisations,
making the whole system integration of democratic institutions
appear dysfunctional.

The idea of system integration borrows from the systems theory
of the possibly most influential living sociologist, a German,
Niklas Luhmann. In his theory, every system is operationally
closed and its operations determine what belongs to the system
and what is outside the system. Every system produces itself and
its environment.

All the stimuli from outside will be selected by the system
and can only impinge upon its workings after these have been
translated into the system's meaning and language. However, its
self-closure is balanced by its cognitive openness; new
programming is created within itself to cope with the new
situation. Learning is like a mechanism of maintenance.

Present developments of democracy here suggest that if
democracy is to be established through institutions, it has
tended to become a closed system. It seems that the system of
institutional structures originating in the Soeharto regime are
still there. It maintains itself, it has selected new situations
after the 1998 political reform, while translating these into its
own meaning and its own language. There seems to be a fundamental
difference in attitude between the initiators of the 1998
political reform, especially the students, and those who were
part of the New Order's political system.

The students wanted to change the whole system by terminating
the long lasting dual function of the military, the exclusion of
all civilian elements of the New Order from the government and
political institutions, as well as ending corruption, collusion
and nepotism (KKN) -- all the political wrong doings of New
Order's bureaucracy.

In contrast. those who were part of the New Order are trying
to show that they are open to political reform. However, the new
situations and aspirations are translated into the meaning and
the language of the New Order's political system.

This has obviously happened within Golkar, the former ruling
party; Golkar politicians keep talking about the importance of
constitutionalism as a system of procedures in politics but
hardly say anything about the substance of the law -- justice.
This is because justice as such will necessarily require the
correction and the elimination of past mistakes: KKN, political
violence, and human rights violations in which Golkar was
supposedly deeply involved.

The whole legal argument of Golkar sidesteps public
questioning and examination in most cases, hence they refer
merely to procedures. When people asked about the huge amount of
money used by Golkar to finance its political campaign during the
1999 general election, chairman Akbar Tandjung answered that the
use of money has been audited by an official body, without saying
anything about where the money came from and why Golkar could
have such big amounts far exceeding the legally permitted amount.

This was why a number of non-governmental organizations
accused Golkar of transgressing Article 14 of Law No.2/1999 which
stipulates that a political party is not allowed to receive
personal donations exceeding Rp 15 million, or donations from
private companies, legal bodies or organizations in excess of Rp
150 million. In a lawsuit lodged at the Supreme Court the
plaintiffs said Golkar received Rp 90 billion from the State
Logistics Agency (Bulog), Rp 15 billion from Bank Bali and Rp 1
billion from the chief of the former Supreme Advisory Council
(DPA).

The plaintiffs therefore demanded that Golkar be suspended as
a political party or at least banned from joining the next
election. The lawsuit was supported by most Jakarta students, but
was dismissed by the Supreme Court. Despite the disappointing
verdict, this lawsuit clearly demonstrates public demand to have
past wrong doings unveiled and brought to court.

In a struggle like this there is a tension and even antagonism
between a legalistic approach to the Constitution by stressing
legal procedures, and the substantive approach aiming for
justice. Neither choice has helped much. Of course one cannot
ignore procedures which make up and guarantee due process of law.
However, abiding by procedures without sufficient awareness and
insight of what the procedures are for, is nothing but formalism.
In contrast, the campaign to return to the substance of law
without taking procedures into account could result unwittingly
in self-righteousness, which often tends to become
uncompromising, one-sided, extremely militant and even fanatical.

For the time being the political and legal struggle in
Indonesia has to seek a middle path between empty formalism and
self-justifying substantiveness. The last conflict between
Abdurrahman, the House and the Assembly might exemplify the
tension between the two approaches. Abdurrahman was obviously
very convinced of the righteousness of his struggle for
democracy, equality, freedom from fear and political repression,
and justice for all. Yet the legislature and the Assembly
stressed procedures to terminate his administration. Both sides
spoke for and on behalf of constitutionalism.

The future of Indonesian politics will depend very much on an
optimal equilibrium between political stability, due process of
law and good workings of political institutions on the one hand
and political rationality, serious commitment to justice for all,
and continuous discourse on the norms and values of democracy.
Values make up the rules or facts of democratic behavior which
has something to do with its empirical aspects; whereas norms
make up the ideal of democracy as something worth fighting for.

However, one has to be very careful to differentiate between
two different, albeit closely related, things: justice and good
life -- both implicit in the ideals of democracy.

The good life belongs to the private domain, giving as much
freedom as possible to those concerned, to choose from among the
existing values which support pursuit of happiness. Meanwhile
justice is a norm which gives as much obligation as possible to
everybody to abide by its principle. Good life is something which
holds good for a certain group of people and must not be
generalized. A set of cultural values instrumental to achieving a
good life in, say, Japan, must not necessarily apply to people
from other countries.

In contrast, norms are principles which can and should be
universalized. So what is just for a Japanese must be just also
for anybody else regardless of country or culture.

Our political experience in the last four decades has showed
clearly that the Soeharto regime made big mistakes in pushing
cultural values as political norms. Key words were then national
identity, eastern culture and finesse.

All these were emphasized as Indonesian political norms,
whereas the normative principles of democratic politics such as
equality before the law, individual freedom, justice and human
rights were mistakenly played down as being merely western
cultural values.

This tension between fact and norms, between values and norms,
between institutions and rationality, will become one which will
come up again and again in the years to come. This does not imply
that the democratic struggle is doomed.

Rather it implies that the struggle for democracy is a
political way to realize the perfection of human beings by
overcoming human fallibility, time and time again.