Our national blueprint

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