Sanctity of Pancasila: Myth or reality?

J. Soedjati Djiwandono, Political Analyst, Jakarta

People have been wondering why President Megawati Soekarnoputri, Vice President Hamzah Haz and People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Speaker Amien Rais did not attend the annual Pancasila Sanctity Day celebration on Oct. 1. Surely, I cannot claim any foreknowledge about it. Nor do I know if they did not show up for the same reasons.

By Presidential Decision of September 1967, Oct. 1 was made Pancasila Sanctity Day. Pancasila is the state ideology consisting of five principles: belief in God, unity, humanity, deliberation for representation and social justice. It is of relevance to note, as will be clear below, that some time later the birth of Pancasila, which previously was celebrated on June 1 (the day in 1945 when Sukarno delivered his extemporaneous speech on the philosophical basis of the future Indonesian state before the Committee on Preparation for Indonesian Independence, later published as The Birth of Pancasila), was also changed by Soeharto to Aug. 18, the day after the proclamation of Indonesian independence, when the 1945 Constitution containing the five principles in its Preamble, if not the word Pancasila itself, was promulgated.

In fact, the Indonesian word kesaktian is richer than the English equivalent "sanctity". While the English word means something like "sacred" or "holy", sakti means something like "supernaturally powerful". The idea behind the "sanctification" of Pancasila seems to be the belief that Indonesians survived the tragedy of the Gestapu (posed by anti-Pancasilaists) because of the sanctity of Pancasila. Soeharto also justified his emerging "New Order" as a "total correction of all the deviations from Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution" by Sukarno's "Old Order".

Given that an ideology simply means, among other things, a set of ideals or das Sollen, formulated by men, to regard Pancasila as something sacred or holy, as having sanctity, goes beyond rationality. It is not an untypical Javanese way of thinking, which is often marked by some form of animism.

Perhaps of greater significance, however, is the possibility that it was part of Soeharto's political maneuver not only to justify his policies and to give legitimacy to his own rule -- by what looked like a democratic process rather than a coup d'etat -- but also to further discredit Sukarno. Soeharto's decision to "sanctify" Pancasila and to change the date of the birth of Pancasila, if indirectly -- I suspect through a book written by the late Nugroho Notosusanto, reportedly the official historian of the Indonesian Military (TNI, then ABRI) -- after Soeharto was appointed acting president by the provisional MPR at its special session in early 1967, which had led to Sukarno's impeachment.

If that should be the case, then it seems understandable that President Megawati, a daughter of Sukarno, stayed away from this year's Pancasila Sanctity Day celebration, if she looks at it the way I do. I have no idea of the reasons for the absence of Vice President Hamzah Haz and MPR Speaker Amien Rais.

Indeed, history is often not much more than what we know of the past based on "facts" available to us, some probably just "myths", and understand it through a certain method or approach. That's why history will never be completely revealed or fully understood.

The record office in London, for instance, opens to the public official documents that have been kept for 30 years. So we should not be surprised if books on history continue to be published with new facts and in new versions.

Then comes the question of what writing history is for. Hence the importance of a philosophy of history, or history as a social science, which helps determine the way we construct or write and rewrite history, to serve a special purpose.

In the context of nation building in the early years of Indonesian independence, books on Indonesian history for high school students, for instance, were focused on the stories of "national heroes", as if such people really made history.

Thus cynics often refer to history as "his story". A Russian proverb says that a historian is "an expert in predicting the past". And what about versions of history?

A joke after the revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1967 describes what I have in mind: Three prisoners shared one cell. One of them asked another, "Why are you here?" The man answers, "I am here because I supported Dubcek". Then he asked back, "What about you, what are you here for?" "I was opposed to Dubcek", was the answer. Finally both of them asked the third man, who had been quiet till then. They shouted together, "Hey, who are you, and why are you here?" He said, "I am Dubcek".

Recently there have been calls for a review of Gestapu (the Sept. 30 Movement) affair of 1965; for the lifting of the ban on communism (MPR Decision No. 25/1966; for national reconciliation and the rehabilitation of political detainees alleged to be members of the now banned Indonesian Communist Party (PKI); for a rewriting of Indonesian history, particularly as regards the alleged communist coup attempt.

And a number of books have been written for the purpose of "setting the record straight" or for "straightening out history".

What is there to believe, then, especially for the young generation of Indonesians? From the outset, the Gestapu affair was controversial. Sukarno insisted it was Gestok, or the Oct.1 Movement. The well-known "Cornell Paper" argued it was an internal affair of the Indonesian Army.

On the basis on an article a long time ago on the affair, The missing link in The Journal of Concerned Asian Scholars, a professor from Bombay wrote a dissertation (published as Indonesia under Soeharto, 1988) which argues that Soeharto was the dalang or mastermind of the affair, a version now supported by the writings of former senior officers such as A. Latief, former foreign minister Subandrio and others. The list of publications on the matter is endless.

I would suggest that we leave it to the young generation of Indonesians to make up their minds. Make available to them all possible sources of information, let them learn independent thinking and analysis, and let them make their own independent conclusions.