Our democratic tug-of-war

Our democratic tug-of-war

The following is the first 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: The German philosopher Juergen Habermas has recently
published his Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a
Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. This opus can be seen as
a continuation of Habermas' discourse on the theory of morality
and its implementation in the political and legal sector. It can
also be treated as a continuation of his theory of the public
sphere and how this contributes to "deliberative democracy."

The basic assumption of deliberative democracy is that
citizens' participation in the democratic process have a rational
character; that voting, for example, should not simply aggregate
preferences but rather follow on a process in which citizens
become informed of the better argument and more general interest.

This basic assumption seems to rest, however, on some fairly
unexamined anthropological beliefs. First, it is assumed that
people who engage in a political discourse compete for an
argument with more truth content than other arguments. Second,
once the better argument has been achieved, most people can be
persuaded to accept that argument by demonstrating the higher
degree of truth content. Third, once people are convinced
intellectually of the truth content, they will become
psychologically motivated and satisfied with the new
enlightenment.

The recent political changeover in Jakarta on July 23 can
exemplify some difficulties in applying Habermas' theory to
realpolitik. Based on the 1945 Constitution, the president and
the House of Representatives are of equal power and position. The
president is therefore in no position to dissolve the House while
the latter has no political capability and legal right to impeach
the president. This balance of power is because the president is
installed in office not by the House but by the People's
Consultative Assembly (MPR). So the president is subordinate to
the Assembly, gets his presidential power as a mandate of the
Assembly, and is obliged to make his administration accountable
in its General Session at the end of his term.

In an emergency, however, the House is entitled to propose a
special session to the Assembly to ask for the accountability for
some of the president's measures which are considered
fundamentally deviant or politically dangerous. The question is
what should be a sufficient reason for the House to make such a
proposal and on what grounds would the Assembly find it necessary
to call for a special session? This question becomes particularly
important if the political relationship between the president and
the House as well as the Assembly happens to be aggravated by
mutual dislike and personal rivalry, as was the case with
president Abdurrahman and Akbar Tandjung, the House speaker and
Amien Rais, the Assembly speaker.

In this balance of power, the president's position is fairly
shaky. The president is subject to accountability, whereas the
House is not obliged to give its accountability because this is
not required by the present system of general elections, whereby
a member of the legislature is not directly responsible to his or
her constituency.

The same can be said of the Assembly which seems to be
responsible to nobody except to itself because it is the most
supreme political institution. With regard to the real balance of
power, a proposal for the special session of the Assembly can be
canceled if the president is supported by a majority of members
of the legislature. Abdurrahman was supported by no more than his
11 percent-strong National Awakening Party (PKB), which he helped
establish before his presidential election.

The trigger toward the special session was the installment of
the acting National Police chief on July 20 by Abdurrahman,
shortly after he fired the National Police chief. An Assembly
decree rules that the installment or dismissal of the National
Police chief needs approval of the legislature -- which
Abdurrahman did not secure. This was the main reason for the
disobedience of the incumbent police chief. Strangely, there was
no protest from both the person concerned and from the House.

The incumbent Gen. S. Bimantoro himself was installed to that
position by the president without the House approval. Be that as
it may, the House found the installment of the acting police
chief highly dangerous since it could create dualism within the
police leadership, something which was feared to jeopardize
political stability and national security.

The rest was nothing but a psychological tug of war between
the president and the legislature on the one hand, and between
the president and the opposing political parties on the other. On
the evening of July 22 there was an informal meeting of
chairpersons of all big political parties at the private house of
Megawati Soekarnoputri. After the meeting, Amien stated that
hopefully Indonesia would have Megawati as the president in the
next two or three days. This statement was made by Amien in
response to Megawati's request to him to speak as the Assembly
speaker. The episode was totally confusing, because those high-
ranking politicians were invited as representatives of their
political parties, and yet Amien was asked by Megawati to speak
as the Assembly speaker.

This was not politically correct because the Assembly speaker
should have only been able to speak on behalf of the Assembly in
a session, but never on his own behalf.

The situation then led Abdurrahman to become totally out of
control, as reflected in his presidential decree declared at 1:10
a.m. the next morning. The decree stipulated first, the
dissolution of the Assembly and the House; second, the freezing
of Golkar as a political party; and third, that the general
election be held in one year.

Obviously the president went too far. The House was his
political and constitutional equal, whereas the Assembly was his
constitutional superior. The freezing of Golkar as a political
party could only be done with the approval of the Supreme Court.

Hence after the decree was announced, House Speaker and also
Golkar Party chairman Akbar Tandjung asked for the Supreme
Court's legal opinion. The answer was that the presidential
decree to suspend the House and the Assembly violated the
Constitution, whereas the freezing of Golkar was rejected.

The Assembly then found it safe to convene the Special Session
at 8 a.m. on July 23, in which all parties present (those absent
were the two parties which walked out) agreed to impeach
Abdurrahman and to install Megawati as the new president, in line
with the 1945 Constitution.

In this critical situation, Abdurrahman had practically no
political support from almost all political institutions. The
Assembly, the House, the Supreme Court, the military and National
Police were all against him. Even the media did not show great
efforts to give a balanced and well-thought reporting and opinion
about the position of both the president and the legislature. The
only support came from PKB and from individual supporters --
religious figures, activists, groups of students, as well as
leaders and rank and file of Nadhatul Ulama, the biggest Muslim
organization once chaired by Abdurrahman.

What can be seen in this situation? There is a split here
between what Habermas called "system integration", which works
according to functional relations within the system and "social
integration", based on values and norms. Those who sided with
Abdurrahman at that critical moment seemed to believe that he was
a man seriously committed to some basic values of democracy such
as freedom, equality before the law, human rights and protection
for minorities.