RI democracy should start from the top

JAKARTA (JP): Democratization would only succeed in Indonesia when the government loosens its 30-year-old grip on power, a political observer said yesterday.

Indria Samego, a researcher of the Center for Information and Development Studies (Cides), told a seminar that now economic development in Indonesia had been successful, Indonesia should speed up political development.

"The state's deep intervention in societal matters has been taken for granted so that it has caused the people's heavy dependence on the resources of their leaders," Indria said.

The heavy dependence on government is obvious from the fact that organization leaders were considered lacking in legitimacy without the government's blessing, he said.

Indria said an overly strong government always allowed mismanagement of development. To make matters worse, the salaries of public officials are meager, he added.

"Inconsistency between government officials' rhetoric and practice is commonly seen, while at the same time public criticism is often deemed an effort to disgrace the government," Indria said.

He suggested government officials use moral and ethical considerations in coping with development problems and other socio-political crises.

"The government should be more open to social control, particularly from the House of Representatives," he said.

The empowering of the legislative body, which in the eyes of the 1945 Constitution was at an equal level to the executive branch, played another key role in democratization, he argued.

"House members need better salaries, higher education and greater authority to make their voices heard by the government," Indria said.

The practices of dismissal and screening imposed on prospective House members must also be dropped because they had nothing to do with democratic principles, he added.

Political parties

Indria said the other basic requirement for democratization was autonomous political parties.

"In the coming years, the government should give political parties more freedom to develop themselves if the nation is keen to respect political representation," Indria said.

He said political parties now served only as a tool of political recruitment, instead of political articulation and socialization.

The government regrouped political organizations to three in 1973: the Moslem-oriented United Development Party, ruling Golkar and the Indonesian Democratic Party, an ally of Nationalist and Christian parties.

A lesser government's involvement in societal matters would have also paved the way for a democratic transfer of power which no longer relied on a certain figure, he said.

"The people will view the process (transfer of power) as a natural one, without having to create a vacuum of power or political upheavals," Indria said.

However, Indria said he was skeptical democratization would materialize in the near future. "I don't know whether it will take us five years or more," he said. "It is a must, however, to improve our image in international communities," he added.

A participant of the seminar, Sudibyo of the Indonesian Institute for Strategic Studies, argued that a simple breakthrough was all that was needed to bring about democratization.

"We simply need to limit the term of office of the power holders to avoid power concentration," Sudibyo said. "If a governor or a regent are limited to two five-year terms, why isn't a president?" he said.

Debates on the limitation of a president's term of office have surfaced in the past, but to no avail. The 1945 Constitution does not say how many times a president may be re-elected. It states only that a president serves for five years and can be reelected. (amd)