Liberty often abused by RI powerholders

By Ignas Kleden

This is the first of two articles on liberty in Indonesia since the colonial yoke was toppled in 1945.

JAKARTA (JP): Liberty seems to have its own history in Indonesia. When it was initially introduced in the early 1920s through the political writings of Sukarno, the word sounded and was accepted as a mere neologism in the then Malay language.

That was the case because in many parts of the Netherlands Indies (the name of the Indonesian territories during the colonial era), and particularly among the indigenous nobility who served as agents of indirect rule, there was a general feeling that colonial rule was not that bad.

During the difficult weeks and months after the attainment of Indonesia's independence in 1945, many people were still asking: "When will we be colonized again?" No wonder, the idea that the people in the Netherlands Indies should be independent of their colonial masters appeared strange, not only to most of the people in the then colony but also to the colonial masters.

The genius of Sukarno, Indonesia's first president, and his contemporaries was that they were able to persuade most people that freedom from colonial bondage was necessary and legitimate.

It had nothing to do with the question of whether the white men and women were good or bad. These people might have been very nice, helpful and friendly as well. But the colonial system was not justified, simply because the exploitation of one nation by another nation, a race by another race and human beings by other human beings contradicted point-blank the basic human rights of self-determination.

Needless to say, the nationalist movement was supported by many unprecedented developments in international politics at that time which helped make the colonized people confident of their cause. Sukarno was, of course, one of the leading lights among those who succeeded in marshaling a concerted effort in the struggle for national independence as a political realization of the idea of liberty. This was done particularly by inculcating nationalist fervor and giving it revolutionary flavor.

In the course of time, Sukarno's revolution ended up victimizing its own children. This happened after he declared the termination of parliamentary democracy and put into force a presidential system.

"Liberal" democracy was superseded by the so-called Guided Democracy, which unfortunately treated those who were still fascinated by the idea of liberty as opposing the revolution.

At that moment, revolution and democracy went their own ways and when they met occasionally, they stood in contradiction to each other. Sjahrir was sent to jail and Mohammad Hatta finally withdrew from the office of Vice President, though both were definitely comrades in arms for Sukarno during the struggle against the Dutch administration and Japanese occupation.

The end of the Old Order government, ironically, was celebrated as the moment of regaining the liberty which fell victim to the authoritarian governance of Sukarno after 1959.

Soeharto came to power in 1967 as a new symbol for liberty from political hanky-panky, moral decadence and economic collapse. The rule of law, clean and effective governance, and economic growth were the flags Soeharto used to wave to attract political support from the people, the military and the students. However, politics was not only the art of the possible, but also the manipulation of the possible.

After 1974, many ideas which had brought all social forces together became noticeably reactionary. Economic growth and the sustainability of national development were made a pretext under which to justify every action of the government to truncate liberty and its expression.

Likewise, the rule of law became an effective means in the hands of the president to label every social criticism and democratic expressions as unconstitutional (who the hell was fully entitled to interpret the articles of the Constitution?). At the same time, very obvious practices of corruption were never condemned as unconstitutional.

Soeharto's New Order government was initially fairly effective, committed and relatively clean. A big change, however, took place after the oil boom period when the government was so confident of its ability to finance every development project with the money from its own pocket.

After all, Indonesia was like a boat floating in an ocean of oil. As the revenue from petrorupiah started to mount, the sobriety of political equanimity evaporated, and corruption started its life at the heart of the center of power.

Money corruption developed into mental corruption and took the form of both cronyism among the business circle, nepotism among political elite and collusion as a link between both.

However, one thing was forgotten. Corruption and its derivatives did not corrupt only the mental resilience of people, especially those within the bureaucracy, but also the self-sustainability of the political system.

In such a condition, the fundamentals of the country's political system and economy were undermined from within. No wonder this system did not have any capability to withstand the hit of the monetary crisis. The tower of economic growth turned out to be a tower of Babel, where political language was always misunderstood by market sentiment.

The present discussion is revolving around whether or not Soeharto and his family really have huge sums of money in foreign banks, supposedly enough to help overcome the present economic crisis.

Soeharto, in a recent interview, said he had nothing and would happily rely for the rest of his life on his official pension.

Probosutedjo, the younger half-brother of Soeharto, keeps trying to persuade people that the rumors of the unimaginable riches of the Cendana (Soeharto) Family were overly exaggerated and there was no evidence of extreme wealth with legal validity.

Now that tangible data is still under the surface, lawyers are being challenged to prepare legal arguments.

The writer is a sociologist based in Jakarta.

Window: The end of the Old Order government, ironically, was celebrated as the moment of regaining the liberty which fell victim to the authoritarian governance of Sukarno after 1959.