Sanctity of the unitary state

Of the three-part alarming article by Dr. J. Soedjati Djiwandono, titled How sacred is the unitary state of Indonesia? (The Jakarta Post, June 3, 4 and 5), it was the second part that most categorically expressed the writer's views, and gave food for thought.

The critical scholar stressed that times, the world and its people had changed. The assessments of values that prevail among the older generation and the present generation differ tellingly. Among such values is the sanctity, or to the extreme group, the sacrosanctity, of national unity that is held dear by the elders, but is now questioned by the present generation.

The scholar questions the merits of national unity, if the country is plagued continuously by an array of evils, enumerated succinctly in the second part of the piece. It may be worthwhile for politicians to take heed, with a view to the evils, as eloquently signaled by the scholar.

It is rather annoying that the scholar should find it necessary to warn of an imaginary split into several smaller nation-states, for the sake of prosperity, equality and justice for all. The motives are well-founded, but such a hallucination about the split into smaller nation-states should not be tolerated, although the motives deserve to be heeded by politicians and bureaucrats.

Although set against a different background and scope, a similar warning about an imaginary disintegration of the unitary state, although not explicitly stated as such, was signaled in the article of Endy M. Bayuni, Deputy Chief Editor of The Jakarta Post, titled Wrong prescription can kill the unitary state (the Post, May 28).

The main thesis of this writing signaled the necessity of the right diagnosis to be secured, as the prescription of a wrong cure would produce a disastrous effect, meaning that it would extinguish the unitary state.

S. SUHAEDI, Jakarta