Political parties should fight paternalistic governance

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.