Promoting democracy

President Soeharto said the state must have the courage to abrogate the rights of political groups that abuse democracy in order to destroy the nation and the state, as well as democracy itself. We consider the President's words as a signal for us to be more resolute in promoting Pancasila Democracy.

In our Indonesian political heritage, we comprehend democracy as being a philosophical legacy and as a concept concerning people's rights that we inherited from the West. This Western philosophical concept of democracy extols a process of decision- making that is based on a 50-percent-plus-one vote.

On the other hand, the decision-making system that we have acquired from or own Indonesian cultural legacy advocates the process of deliberation toward consensus. Actually, this process makes it possible for us to hold open discussions of problems in order to arrive at a consensus in which nobody will consider themselves as winners or losers.

Why was President Soeharto so forceful in encouraging the state to abrogate the rights of the above-mentioned political groupings? One purpose of the statement seems easy enough to grasp: We must adopt democracy as a system without giving rise to acts of anarchy and while continuing to promote democracy on the basis of our Pancasila ideology and our Constitution.

-- Bisnis Indonesia, Jakarta