Political institutionalization spurs democracy: Scholars

A'an Suryana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Scholars called on the government on Wednesday to push ahead to create and enable a political institutionalization drive -- a stronger respect for the nation's democratic institutions -- in the country, saying, it was a necessity to achieve democracy.

If everyone heeded the democratic principles and rules in every aspect of life, achieved through political institutionalization, the situation would ease away from a possible emergence of authoritarian leaders and would later offer a stable democracy, they said.

"Changes in national leadership will not pose a problem to the democratization process if the country has mature institutions and respects democratic rules," noted scholar Frans Magnis Suseno said in a seminar here on Wednesday.

A leadership crisis has characterized Indonesia since the forced resignation of former dictator Soeharto in May 1998.

Magnis said the governments of B.J. Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati Soekarnoputri had all failed to lift the country out of its prolonged multidimensional crisis.

"Even worse, all walks of life, including those in power, do not respect the prevailing democratic principles and rules at all," Magnis said, adding that respect for law would reduce the tendency among leaders to use their power to act against democratic principles.

"The rule of the game, including the law, will limit personal power of the leaders, and this will be useful to prevent power abuses carried out by those leaders," he said.

Meanwhile, another speaker at the seminar Bima Arya Sugiarto from the Center for Government and Parliamentary Studies said that Indonesia, which was in a transition period toward a democracy, still had failed to carry out political institutionalization.

The recent internal splits afflicting many parties was evidence that those parties were not practicing democratic principles even within their respective party.

"Once they disagree with others, they simply quit the party," he said.

Bima lashed out at the tendency that people depended on charismatic leaders, instead of basic rules.

"This tendency could lead to absolute power enjoyed by party leaders and that is a threat to democracy," he said.