Political parties should fight paternalistic governance

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): What is good governance, and what can assure good governance?

According to experts, good governance is a concept purporting to limit arbitrary actions performed by governments through legal devices and other institutional instruments.

Guidelines have been issued by various institutions to define the basic characteristics of good governance. One such guideline was issued by the World Bank in 1993. According to this guideline, good governance is a system characterized by the following five features: (1) a strong participatory civil society; (2) open, predictable policy-making; (3) an accountable executive; (4) a professional bureaucracy; and (5) the rule of law.

At what stage is Indonesia at the moment in this regard, and what must we do to bring about good governance here?

If we use the above criterion as our yardstick, I think we first need to transform our society, to make it capable of supporting and nourishing good governance.

According to noted intellectual and social activist Y.B. Mangunwijaya (Romo Mangun), mere reform is not enough.

Reform is, at best, only a reshaping of an existing pattern. He argued that what we must do is to transform ourselves, that is, to change ourselves from within.

We have to undergo a kind of "genetic change", I think, to transform ourselves for this purpose. We need to change, among others, our old attitude of always deserting reason and principles when facing intimidation and repression. And replace it with a new attitude of resolutely defending principles and sticking to reason in the face of any repression.

It is only through such radical changes that we will be able to create new social and political formats, which will provide us with enough freedom to respond to every problem, every challenge and every opportunity in a creative way.

Even though one might argue that this problem of "reform" versus "transformation" is merely a matter of semantics, I tend to agree with Romo Mangun.

A strong participatory civil society, for instance, will not come about in our society without radically changing and transforming our traditional habit of always letting the government take all the initiatives in solving existing problems.

The principle of "the rule of law", to mention another example, can never be implemented in our society as long as we preserve the old notion that "the ruler is the law".

To replace this tradition with the principle of "the rule of law" will require what physicists call a quantum leap.

I think good governance will never come within our reach if our society does not become more democratic. Each of the five requirements mentioned above will materialize only if we, as citizens, are willing to respect and upheld democratic values, if we succeed in developing democratic institutions within our society, and if we do not interfere with the democratic processes that take place in society.

It is also realistic to say that the becoming of good governance in our society will take place only if our government, now and in the future, is not antagonistic toward the concept of good governance.

All these ifs mean that good governance cannot be taken for granted in our society. Unless the nation consciously and continuously strives for it, good governance will remain a dream in our society,

What are the main obstacles that stand in our way toward good governance?

As I see it, there are three main obstacles. First, is our tradition of paternalistic governance.

Paternalistic governance excludes the notion of popular participation both in the formulation of policies and also in the implementation of policies.

Paternalistic governance presumes that those in power are omniscient and that it is their privilege to protect and guide the governed.

The Javanese word pengayoman, literally meaning custody, is a slogan that has been used by the previous Soeharto regime to preempt any initiative toward significant popular participation in political affairs.

This notion and tradition of paternalistic governance has been deeply anchored within our bureaucracy. Failure to wipe out the traces of this tradition from our bureaucracy will make good governance just impossible in our society.

Second, our political culture still emphasizes the art of securing the right to govern without, simultaneously, emphasizing the need for democratizing the existing system of governance.

It is true that the concept of benevolent government has always been part of our political culture, but I think that this concept is substantially different from that of democratic governance.

I hope it is a truism that the notion of political opposition is no longer a taboo in our political culture.

But merely dropping the old view that opposition is an anathema to Indonesian democracy is not enough. We have to generate basic ethics concerning the rules of opposition within our political culture. And since politeness and euphemism have always been part of our culture, we must develop in our political culture the art of conducting polite but effective opposition, all the euphemisms notwithstanding.

I am afraid that failure to develop a modern and relevant view of opposition and its basic rules will bring us back to the old practices of "liberal democracy" in the 1950s.

Third, our education system has stopped being a force in shaping the political culture of our country. The emergence of good governance depends very much upon whether each successive generation in our society is aware of the need to preserve and cultivate democracy.

And I do not think we can assume that such awareness will automatically dawn upon the young generation. We are fortunate that despite the deliberate choice of our education system in the past to embark upon political indoctrination instead of political education, we still have a generation that is deeply committed to democracy, decent governance and decent society.

But I do not think that in the future, we can leave the survival of democracy to forces we do not control.

How do we overcome these three main obstacles?

I think this is an assignment for our political parties and our educational community. The burgeoning of political parties in our society can be a contributing factor to the solution of this problem only if our political players, especially those from the young and untainted generation, pay due attention to the problem of eradicating the traces of paternalistic governance and that of cultivating democratic political culture.

And our school system can play a significant role in the rejuvenation of our political culture only if our educational community can generate an educational idealism which is congruent to the political idealism that is emerging in our society.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.