Our national blueprint

President B.J. Habibie has described six development milestones in our history and attempts to build a civil society based upon the central role of the government initiating, facilitating and promoting a competitive democratic society based on respect for human rights, freedom of speech and healthy competition among members of society.

I applauded his exposition of his major plans and blueprint. This is truly the first clear and rational national blueprint that has ever been developed by our government leader/president. However, I must say that it suffers from the same problem of the old blueprints built by his predecessors, namely the proposition that the central government has the ability to transform society.

The "Old Order" under president Sukarno wanted to build an utopian society based on cultural nationalism and guided democracy with the central government controlling the whole transformation process. It fell flat on its face as the concentration of power in his hands and his government resulted in revolt.

The next president, with his "New Order", attempted to build a prosperous society based upon the control of economic process by a central government and a selected elite. It also fell flat on its face as the practice of corruption, collusion and nepotism became out of control and people revolted.

Now, the Order of Reform proposes to build a civil society based upon the belief that the central government can change the national conscience and consciousness to lead the transformation of a "lawless" society into a civil society. How can it be done? Isn't that absurd? Isn't it another way of controlling the people and directing them toward a certain path, not unlike leading buffaloes by pulling on the ropes attached to their noses? What techniques are going to be used to control and direct the development process of the nation (as if we can control and guide the national development)? National development, just like personal development, has its own rhythm, cycles, path, direction and internal driving mechanism. Many leaders in the world have attempted to guide their nations and people with the belief that they had the keys and answers to the problems. Most failed to achieve their lofty goals. Hitler, Mussolini, Caesar Hirohito, Napoleon, Lenin, Stalin, Genghis Khan, Roosevelt, to name a few, were among those leaders who had the false belief that they could lead and control the people for their lofty goals. All of them failed.

Development milestones are not dictated by a few leaders, they are dictated by the people as a whole. Sukarno, Soeharto or Habibie did not and do no dictate our national milestones. It is the responsibility of all of us to develop our milestones and where the nation is going. The central government should be humble enough to return the process of national development to the people through constitutional representation and democracy. The central government does not have any central role in directing the people. It should do what the people want it to do and not the other way around.

K. PRIBADI

Cimahi, West Java