Reconciliation and the new Indonesia

By H.S. Dillon

JAKARTA (JP): Although victims of apartheid, justly considered a gross violation of human rights, black South Africans have ended violent conflict through negotiations with their onetime masters.

They experimented with an alternative to pursuing perpetrators of human rights violations through the existing criminal justice system by creating a drawn-out process called Truth and Reconciliation.

Despite its shortcomings, South Africa appears to be well down the road to constitutional democracy. How would we traverse such a path?

National Awakening Day on May 20 never fails to arouse feelings of great awe and deep respect for our founders, who possessed such foresight as to push aside all differences and join forces in the fight for independence.

From 1908, there was no turning back. The seeds then planted sowed a sense of national identity, as attested by our Youth Declaration (Sumpah Pemuda).

The unity thus forged served as a bedrock in the struggle against colonial masters in all walks of life, eventually leading to the proclamation of independence.

The hundreds of thousands who laid down their lives made the ultimate sacrifice based on their firm conviction in the project we were then embarking upon --- a free, just and prosperous Indonesia.

How would they feel if they were to see us today? How would they judge us, the generations that have led our nationhood to decay, largely because of our greed and complacency?

What would they think of our leaders who are squandering the trust that we put in them through free elections? Leaders, who like their former colonial masters, have found that manipulating divisive forces is essential to preserving power.

Leaders who are betraying the project we, the people, thought we were creating with our votes: a born-again, just and more humane Indonesia.

Leaders who pushed their stooges into the Cabinet to exploit their portfolios for narrow sectarian interests. Leaders, who while pretending to be supporters of the President, were actually positioning themselves to take over whenever he faltered.

Leaders who even now are hoping that the pressures of office will induce another stroke and finish him off. With him out of the way, disposing of the Vice President should be a piece of cake.

What can we really expect from such characters? Even more frightening, what do they reveal about us, and about the state of our society? Leaders emerge from a society, and they remain part of it: have we then really got the leaders we deserve?

Our nation-state is ailing, and if we remain on the sidelines, it will die. During Soeharto's long regime and B.J. Habibie's short tenure, we kept our silence when the government -- identifying itself as the state -- dominated society.

We looked the other way when thousands of our brethren were raped and their property looted. We appeared not to notice when Soeharto and his cronies forced peasants off their land. Perhaps many of us even benefited from associating with such perpetrators.

We were unmoved when the government assumed a "hegemony of meaning", dictating which religions were kosher, determining who was nationalistic and, yes, even defining who was "Indonesian".

A joke from a foreign correspondent comes to mind, about the rivalry between two generals, Benny Moerdani and M. Jusuf. One maintained that religion did not matter, what really counted was being Javanese. The other said that ethnicity was not important, but a non-Muslim could never become president!

With Maluku imploding, Aceh up in arms, Papua looking across the border, can we still afford to remain in our own worlds? Going about our daily lives as if those who are dying every day do not matter.

Is the statement by a foreign leader "if the Indonesians want to tear themselves apart, it is their right", not enough to shame us into action? Are we going to allow our leaders to continue to pit us against each other?

We pose as being much superior to our forefathers because we have so many creature comforts now, but where would we be today without their sacrifices. We pride ourselves on having higher education, but are we not poorer in spirit?

We can only call ourselves superior to our founders, if we are capable of transcending the divisive forces, often known as "primordial interests" here, and manage to live together as a nation they fought for.

We cannot continue to live within ourselves, but we also have to bear the interests of our less-fortunate brethren in mind. Violent conflict invariably leads to misery and poverty, and the elderly, women, and children -- our future -- are often the most oppressed.

How can we let the children go without enough food, health care and education? For their sake, we have to reconcile our differences, reunite and work on building a more just, humane and prosperous new Indonesia.

On this day, we should become real Indonesians again, and renew our commitment to our nationhood. We should aim at proving ourselves worthy descendants of our founders. We should endeavor to conduct our lives such that one day our children will remember us with pride, even as our hearts swell today with memories of the sacrifices our founders made for us.

The writer is a member of the private Future Indonesia working group.