Is internal security vulnerable?

Is internal security vulnerable?

By Aleksius Jemadu

BANDUNG (JP): Last month President Soeharto called on
intellectuals affiliated with the Association of Indonesian
Moslem Intellectuals (ICMI) to study reasons for the riots which
occurred in several places before and after the election (The
Jakarta Post June 3, 1997). The matter was serious enough that
the President decided a study was urgently needed. The main
challenge ahead now is how to deal with a growing vulnerability
of our internal security.

In the mass media, political scientists have offered different
explanations for the riots. There seems to be a consensus among
the analysts that people commit violent acts because they are fed
up with social injustice and political degeneration. It is
commonly believed that the government has grown stronger at the
expense of the powerlessness of the common people.

But is our state really strong? If it is, why has it become
vulnerable to violence? Barry Buzan, author of People, States &
Fear (1991), suggested that the nature of a state consists of
three components: the idea of the state, the physical base of the
state, and the institutional expression of the state. The
national security problem can be understood as a situation in
which there is a threat to any of these components. Examining the
links between these different components can be a fruitful
insight into the national security problem.

Many would agree that people involved in the riots were
resisting the state's institutional expression. The riots were
not jeopardizing the state as an idea nor were they threatening
the state's physical basis. We are therefore challenged to
examine the proper function of government institutions deeper
because they hold the authority and represent the state. The
state's institutional expression is a crucial determinant in
establishing a national security system.

It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that
governments can easily exploit the links between their open
security and that of the state to increase their leverage over
domestic politics. Such an assumption is based on the fact that
governments have their own interests and seek to preserve them in
the name of national security or political stability.

Political leaders also make efforts to shape the political
regime so that their presence at the top of the power hierarchy
would be indispensable. In this way, governments try to justify
their domination over domestic opponents by appealing to national
security. In an extreme case, a national leader could turn out to
be the political institution itself. This is precisely the reason
why political succession in developing countries is much more
complicated than that of developed countries.

The government as the institutional expression of the state
never functions in a vacuum. Rather, it is embedded in the
evolution of a political regime which is assigned to serve the
interests of those in power. In such a context, there could never
be an independent political process because all modes of
political communication are dominated by the ruling elite. As a
result, political leaders are more preoccupied with the
systematic regimentation of the political system than with being
flexible to people's demands.

To determine whether a state is strong or weak we need to
distinguish between a state as a general will and a state in its
concrete institutional manifestation. On the basis of such
reasoning, we can distinguish between weak and strong states.
Weak states are characterized by among others, high levels of
political violence, a conspicuous role for political police in
citizens' everyday lives, frequent ideological conflict, a lack
of coherent national identity, a lack of a clear and observed
hierarchy of political authority, and a high degree of state
control over the media.

The frequent occurrence of riots and popular protest against
the government indicates that the institutional expression of our
general will is under increasing pressure. People are
disappointed not so much with the idea of the state but with its
institutional manifestation, which is increasingly embedded in
the preservation of the existing political and economic
establishment. It is therefore out of proportion if government
authorities consider all protests against their policies acts of
subversion.

There are several steps that need to be taken if we want to
deal with the vulnerability of our internal security. First, at
the philosophical level there must be a renewed understanding of
the concept of the common good. This concept refers to an
instruction to approach policy making in a way that all political
decisions should attend to the interests of each social group in
an impartial manner. Therefore, the concept does not describe a
determinate goal but prescribes an approach by which the claims
of all sections in society are considered in a spirit of
impartiality (S.I. Benn and R.S. Peters, 1958).

Second, there is an increasingly persuasive suggestion to
separate the national police from the Armed Forces. The
Indonesian national police should develop as an independent
organization so that it can cope with technological progress and
professional demands. The national police should also have its
own budget. Within the Armed Forces, the national police always
gets the last priority in terms of budget allocation and human
resources development. This is precisely the reason why the
national police still lacks professionalism.

Third, embedding the state's institutional expression in the
preservation of political and economic interests of the ruling
elite could weaken the legitimacy of political power. Political
development should not mean political regimentation because the
latter will only serve the interests of those in power. Shouldn't
we serve the sovereign public?

The writer is the Director of the Parahyangan Center for
International Studies (PACIS) at the Catholic University of
Parahyangan, Bandung.

Window A: To determine whether a state is strong or weak we need to
distinguish between a state as a general will and a state in its
concrete institutional manifestation.