RI should decentralize system

RI should decentralize system

By Imron Cotan

JAKARTA (JP): In less than two hundred days, the international
community will enter the 21st century, leaving behind the current
second millennium which is marred by conflict and posing
unprecedented challenges to human beings.

All nation-states, particularly Indonesia, should fully
prepare themselves before entering this new era of obscurity. A
fundamental question needs to be raised as to how Indonesia as a
nation-state will react to this rapidly-changing international
environment in order to survive in an uncertain and challenging
third millennium.

One needs to reflect on the history of human beings to get a
clear picture of the subject. It was, indeed, painfully tainted
with many bloody conflicts inflicting incalculable damage upon
mankind and its environment. It is still fresh in our memory that
during the cold war era, although those superpower countries were
relatively successful in avoiding direct conflict and maintaining
stable yet awkward relations, they managed to manipulate their
political allies to become involved with, and engaged in, proxy
wars.

The expansion of ideologies, western-based or eastern-based,
has been pinpointed as the root of these proxy wars. True as it
might be, these superpower countries have used the cold war as a
pretext to develop sophisticated weapons, especially weapons of
mass destruction. These include chemical, biological and nuclear
weapons and their delivery systems.

In the 1970s and 1980s, these countries, especially the United
States and the former Soviet Union developed sophisticated
weapons of mass destruction capable of destroying the world in a
short period of time. But sanity prevailed and these superpowers
managed not to use them, thereby saving mankind and its entire
civilization from being annihilated. But proxy wars have used the
conflicting states as a testing ground for their newly inverted
conventional weapons.

The simmering tensions between the Western and Eastern blocs
and the open conflicts among those proxies have diluted the
international community's attention from the basic and recurrent
issues, originating from the French Revolution (1789), namely:
"liberte, egalite et fratenite". At this particular juncture,
these issues were suppressed below the surface and the threat to
the survival of nation-states was perceived as coming from a
head-on collision between blocs, involving the use of weapons of
mass destruction.

When the cold war ended, the international social, political
and economic spheres went through fundamental and rapid changes,
beyond people's imagination. From a political perspective, the
collapse of the former Soviet Union and the political
independence of Eastern and Central European nations was regarded
as the victory of democracy against communism. But from an
economic viewpoint, it was perceived as the victory of capitalism
or the free market economy against a closed and centralized
economic system.

In the context of development, expansion and change of the
international society or system is related to the resurgence of
these recurrent issues. They have resurfaced in their wildest
forms and manifested in so many other issues, including:
democratization, liberalization, human rights, labor standards,
social clauses and the free market economy. They have become the
bone of contention not only between or among nation-states but
within nation-states as well and, to some extent, caused the
disintegration of countries as was the case in the former
Yugoslavia, Somalia and Burundi.

With today's information revolution, these recurrent issues
recognize no borders, especially when the major countries
strongly consider them as: "les affaires mondiale" over which
they think they have the right to interfere and mingle in other
countries' affairs. The high hopes expressed at the beginning of
the post cold war era asserting that the world would enter an era
of cooperation and mutual partnership have gone unheeded.
Instead, conflict persisted and was further aggravated by the
fierce competition among nations in trying to secure world
resources for their own benefits, disregarding environmental
sustainability and the interests of others, especially those of
developing countries.

Consisting of thousands of islands and ethnicities, Indonesia
is now being confronted with this delicate international
environment. Our nation's history does not have an excellent
record, particularly in terms of internal dynamics as it was
tainted by separatist movements.

We have gone through and are still experiencing a series of
internal conflicts, such as East Timor, Irian Jaya and Aceh.
Worse still, some quarters have persistently tried to interfere
with our domestic problems, using those recurrent issues as the
pretext. The latest enactment of a resolution in the House of
Representatives in the United States criticizing Indonesia's
human rights record in East Timor is one of many examples.
Fortunately, President Soeharto has moved to the level playing
field between the two countries by canceling the purchase of F-15
fighter planes and canceling the E-IMET.

The delicate international environmental situation which now
confronts Indonesia has prompted us to raise a fundamental
question as to how Indonesia could enter the uncertain third
millennium as a united nation-state. This question is indeed
difficult to answer. To start with, Indonesia as a nation-state
should quickly adapt itself with this rapidly-changing world. It
can only do this by opening its social, political and economic
systems, thereby allowing people to participate more in the
decision-making process which would lead to transparency and
political accountability. The other alternative would be to let
Indonesia disintegrate into smaller subnation-states, as Hazel
Henderson predicted in her book titled Building A Win-Win World:
Life Beyond Global Economic Warfare (Berret-Koehler Publisher,
1996). This would attempt to nurture the culture of cooperation
and avoid conflict. The price would be expensive for the nation's
founding fathers and the Indonesia people, who have made
tremendous sacrifices to gain independence from the colonial
powers and to maintain this country's unity.

Hazel Henderson's thesis asserted that to succeed in the third
millennium, nation-states need to become smaller entities as was
the case in the first millennium. This cannot be entertained by
Indonesia, for it would seriously damage our nationalism and
sense of unity (small welfare subnation-state versus
nationalism).

But we can opt for a combination of the two. To survive the
third millennium, Indonesia should decentralize its political
system, giving more power to provincial or local governments.
This should be coupled by the broader participation of people
from the grassroots in the decision-making process which leads to
transparency and political accountability.

The writer is a former United Nations Disarmament Fellow and
is an expert on international peace and security affairs,
residing in Jakarta.

Window: The delicate international environmental situation which
now confronts Indonesia has prompted us to raise a fundamental
question as to how Indonesia could enter the uncertain third
millennium as a united nation-state.