RI democracy should start from the top
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)