Sielding Pancasila from inflationary devaluation

By Franz Magnis-Suseno

JAKARTA (JP): Fifty years of Indonesian independence also means 50 years Pancasila.

On Aug. 18, one day after the Proclamation of Independence, Indonesia's first constitution, the famous 1945 Constitution still enforced, was ratified by the Commission for the Preparation of the Independence of Indonesia.

The last paragraph of its preamble contained the five principles of Pancasila: belief in one God, just and civilized humanism, the unity of Indonesia, people's power in wisdom through common deliberation/representation, and social justice for the whole Indonesian people.

Since then, Pancasila has functioned as the philosophical foundation of the Republic of Indonesia.

Foreigners are often baffled by the unending reference to Pancasila in speeches by Indonesian officials at seminars and on every occasion. Pancasila's five principles look both dignified and innocent. They contain, in an elegant and well balanced way, the founding values of the generally recognized fundamental principles of political ethics (except environmental ones which, in 1945, were not yet within the horizon of humanity).

Indonesians are often fed up by talk of Pancasila. Especially the increasingly skeptical youth. Fifteen years of Pancasila courses (P4), almost from cradle to the grave, induces immediate drowsiness upon hearing the word Pancasila.

The editor of a book I wrote on Pancasila Democracy insisted on scrapping the word Pancasila in the title because he was afraid it would negatively affect its sales. Students become cynical when observing how clamp downs on democratic freedoms, on workers rights, or on critiques by the media are all justified by referring to Pancasila.

Therefore it seems to be the time to stress that Pancasila is not just verbal mumbo-jumbo. The fact is that without Pancasila this country would not have come into existence and could continue to exist if Pancasila was scrapped or replaced by something else.

At the end of May 1945, the Preparatory Assembly for Indonesian Independence had reached a dangerous impasse: should independent Indonesia become a secular nationalistic state, or should Islam become its ideological basis?

In this situation Sukarno proposed five principles of what he called "Pancasila", in fact similar to those which later became official, but in different wording and sequence.

Sukarno's proposal was enthusiastically received by all sides. It still took more than two months until Pancasila got into its definite form.

First, a sub-commission put belief in God in first place and, in order to make Pancasila more acceptable to Moslems, added the words "with the obligation of its adherents to observe the Islamic syariah (law)".

But after Christians from Eastern Indonesia had objected that mentioning the majority religion in the most fundamental document of the state would position non-Moslems as second rate citizens, these words were unanimously scrapped on Aug. 18 (this elimination proved to be a bone of contention in times to come). Thus Pancasila came into existence.

It is worth noting that Pancasila was later inserted in an identical form in the two other constitutions Indonesia once had, the "Constitution of the United Republic of Indonesia" in 1949 and in the " Provisional Constitution" of 1950 (the 1945 Constitution of was restored by President Sukarno in 1959).

Pancasila is, therefore, the result of a "noble covenant of the whole nations". It is the foundational compromise or consensus of the Indonesian state. Those aspiring to an Islamic state declared themselves ready to sacrifice this ideal for the unity of the country. Those hoping for a state based exclusively on Indonesian nationhood -- almost all of them Moslem too -- renounced a secular model and accepted statehood on the basis of the belief in one God.

Pancasila, therefore, refers directly to its five principles, all of them deeply rooted in the traditional values of the different Indonesian cultures.

But these principles get their relevance from the fact that Pancasila means the fundamental consensus on which the willingness to join the common Indonesian state is based; that this state belongs to all Indonesians, regardless of their religious affiliations. Therefore, there shouldn't be any discrimination as to basic human and civil rights on terms of majority versus minority.

The fundamental importance of Pancasila is obvious. Shaking Pancasila would imply shaking the very foundations on which the unity of the Indonesian state is based, the fundamental consensus underlying the willingness of those hundreds of tribes and communities of very different cultural and religious orientations, spread over thousands of islands, to unite into one Indonesia.

During the first 20 years of independence, Pancasila was used mainly to counter repeated moves to make the Indonesian state more Islamic. When the new order was established, it undertook far reaching political and ideological reorientations. Against the ideological hotchpotch of the later Sukarno years, the new order chose the obvious strategy to legitimize its new direction back to Pancasila.

Thus, Pancasila is appealed to in order to prove the legitimacy of the new order policies. Except in cases of pure omong kosong (blabbering), reference to Pancasila has always an exact meaning although, in order to retrieve it, one must be able to read between the lines.

In this context it is particularly helpful to remember the four "ideologies" rejected by the new order : communism, "rightist (meaning Islamic) extremism", western liberalism (originally including everything from human rights to parliamentary democracy); and "class struggle" or confrontational labor relations.

On the first two points there exist a broad consensus throughout the political spectrum. Communism, with its totalitarian understanding of power and its atheism, cannot be accommodated within a Pancasila state seems to be obvious.

While the option of an "Islamic state", even the need for Islamic political parties, are increasingly regarded as out of date also by Moslem intellectuals and politicians.

But the same cannot be said on point three and four. On the contrary, the discussion about democracy and human rights grows and then is cut back, like the banning of Tempo and two other journals last year, which increases the sense that, 50 years after independence, the time has come to give Pancasila democracy more substance.

The same is true for labor. If we want to develop a higher quality labor force, workers will have to be treated as partners and be able to organize. The still unresolved murder of Marsinah has, in fact, become a catalyst for more openness on the labor front.

Pancasila is and remains the basic consensus upon which the unity of Indonesia and her dignity as a civilized state is based. In order to shield Pancasila from inflationary devaluation, a more careful, less self-serving use of Pancasila language by those in power seems to be well advised.

Dr. Franz Magnis-Suseno SJ is professor for social philosophy at Driyarkara School of Philosophy in Jakarta.