Nation must agree to fight common enemies to forge unity

Pitan Daslani, Jakarta

In a fragmented democracy at risk of disintegration, one good way to keep the nation united is to draw public attention to the need to fight common enemies. This kind of rallying strategy could be adopted by the next Indonesian president to promote national stability, in an era that does not welcome the return of military politics to state affairs.

Historically, Indonesians would feel united if they saw common threats or common enemies at their door. They would abandon, for a while, their individual pursuits if their interests were collectively threatened.

The effectiveness of such a rallying strategy would depend on the extent to which the next leader could manage public opinion. And, if he or she could get other political actors to look toward the same direction, we could expect a stable government in the foreseeable future.

The reverse is also true: If the next leader failed to do this properly, the country's journey toward full-fledged democracy would be dangerously bumpy, given the fact that public opinion has become an intense battle ground for so many political and mass organizations.

This could be made worse by fragmentations of the mass-media industry resulting from the new era's politico-business constellation, a new trend that needs to be observed, given that even damaging political indoctrinations can easily be carried out through the local media today.

In the context of Indonesian democracy and reform today, what has been missing is a systematic set of rallying points around which political and mass organizations, as well as other political actors, could gather to formulate the future of the country. A lack of this is to blame for the distortion and fragmentation of the political arena to the extent that people are victimized in many instances. The resumption of inter- religious conflict in Ambon attests to the lack of unifying factors.

Actually, there are many unifying factors in society which reform politicians could manage to advance democracy, if only they would spend some time putting those things on the agenda for systematic implementation. When the reform era started in May 1998, past political blunders emerged as rallying points around which people gathered to channel their aspirations.

For instance, the need to remove the New Order, create a clean government, eradicate corruption and uphold the law. These issues became unifying factors that were naturally in rhythm with society's rising political awareness.

Three succeeding presidents that have come into the picture have failed to properly manage the unifying factors in society. Political parties and mass organizations that are now amplifying their presence also take this for granted. As a result, the political theater is fragmented with every camp moving along its own track toward its own goals, and there is hardly a systematic set of unifying factors that would bind the nation strongly. So much so, that if the military had been incapacitated, the nation would have been broken apart by now.

Sukarno was able to rule the country for 20 years because he was good at maintaining anticolonialism sentiment, while drumming up patriotism and nationalism as unifying factors. Soeharto was able to sit comfortably atop his empire for 32 years because he was the maestro of creating as many common threats and enemies as possible. And, reformists toppled him because he was perceived to be their common enemy, and his New Order, their common threat.

What types of common enemies or threats need to be defined clearly as unifying factors for society to gather around? There are many: Poverty, corruption, impotence of law, unemployment, and dirty politics must all be underlined as common enemies. If the next leader failed to perform well in the battle against these enemies, it would surely backfire.

Nevertheless, for Indonesia to remain stable, this task must be performed, not only by the executive authorities, but by the legislative and judiciary ones as well. This requires full support from political and mass organizations, especially those politicians in the House of Representatives (DPR).

Political parties which wish to broaden the bases of their platforms need to red-print all those common enemies on their agendas. They could educate their respective constituencies to realize that the country is in a war situation. That is, the war against common enemies, but not against fellow citizens. That would be a good starting point for policy formulation to be forwarded to the government.

After that, the political and mass organizations themselves would need to establish a dialog mechanism under which they could meet regularly to bring their visions closer together.

To have a good set of such unifying factors, the country needs a national consensus -- a moral obligation that must be acceptable to all political institutions and other actors outside the official establishment.

What the country also needs most today is good managers of such unifying factors. It may not be too much of an exaggeration to assume that the fate of Indonesian unity in the years ahead depends to a great extent on political leaders' ability to manage unifying factors in society, in order to prevent such factors from becoming elements of disunity.

The author, a freelance writer, can be reached at pitand@singapore.com