Sixty years of Indonesian independence

J. Soedjati Djiwandono, Jakarta

For sixty long years, we Indonesians have lived as a nation and as a sovereign and independent nation state, and thus have been in control of our own destiny.

Indeed, the sovereignty and independence of any country are in theory boundless, except where limited by others. This is especially true now in a shrinking, and increasingly open and interdependent world because of the constant advancement of information and communications technology.

A sovereign and independent state does not in itself guarantee individual freedoms for its people. However, in a speech to the U.S. Congress on Jan. 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed the famous "Four Freedoms": "freedom of speech and expression"; "freedom of every person to worship God in his own way"; "freedom from want ... (ensured by) economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants; and "freedom from fear ... (ensured by) a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor."

Whatever he meant, President Sukarno later added " freedom to be free". In 1953, President Liu Shiao-chi of China advocated his own version of the "four freedoms", which, however, were attacked by Mao Zedong. Liu was then denounced as a "capitalist inroader" and expelled from the party.

Indeed, after sixty years as a nation and as a nation state, Indonesia has yet to give proper heed to the idea of "freedoms" for its people for the achievement of their higher goals in life as human beings, which is the common good based on justice. The nation state is not an end in itself.

To be sure, in this era of reform, we are enjoying greater freedom of expression. However, our freedom of worship, one of the most basic human rights, has remained precarious. Those who regard themselves as the majority, claiming a monopoly on the "mainstream" or even "the divine truth", may condemn a minority group of believers as "deviationists".

The state still tampers with our freedom of worship through unjust laws and regulations. In addition, a variety of laws and regulations still reflect discrimination on different grounds, religious as well as racial, implicitly or explicitly.

For a large majority of the people, freedom from want remains a distant dream, with the latest figure for the number of people living in poverty being over 50 million, almost one-fourth of the entire population of the country. And freedom from fear remains a distant dream due to weak law enforcement and the tendency of many to take the law into their own hands. Therefore, I still hesitate to answer my old question, "Is Indonesia a free country?"

The continued existence of unjust laws that violate human rights, particularly freedom of religion, and other laws and regulations of a discriminatory nature, also reflects a lack of maturity in our concept of nationhood, which should embrace the principle of pluralism as formulated in the motto "unity in diversity".

Literally, as a nation Indonesia is one of the most diverse in the world in ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural terms. And as a country, it is literally the largest archipelago in the world, consisting of some 17,000 islands, though "only" 4,000 of them are inhabited.

Whatever theoretical arguments there may be for the building of the Indonesian nation, the determination to build Indonesia as a nation was expressed in the form of the Youth Pledge of Oct. 28, 1928: the recognition of one motherland, Indonesia, the promotion of one nation, Indonesia, and the adoption of one national language, Indonesian. It did not say anything about one's religion!

What we need is a clear set of common core values that bind the Indonesian people together as a nation. And just as the sovereignty and independence of states are limited by those of other states in the community of nations, the people's freedoms are limited by those of others in a nation state. Hence the need for a political system that is based on the rule of law (which presupposes just laws), and marked by effective checks and balances to avoid excessive freedom and its abuse.

A political system is provided for by a constitution, which lays the basis of a state and determines its goals -- freedom and independence, and the promotion of the common good based on justice as embodied in the ideals of democracy, equality, justice and human rights.

Much of the injustice in our laws and legislation, particularly in the form of discrimination, has its source in the ambiguous concepts and values that form the basis of our political system as provided for by our constitution. Hence the need for further and more fundamental reform of our political system, and above all our constitution.

This reform should be aimed at overcoming the fundamental weaknesses of the constitution and thus the political system it establishes. It is, therefore, meaningless and even counterproductive to regard any part of the constitution as sacrosanct, and thus not open to change. No man-made document may be deemed sacrosanct, especially based on unreasonable, illogical and dishonest arguments.

Indeed, the preamble to the 1945 Constitution is the main source of the ambiguity, ambivalence and confusion in our concept of nationhood, and in our constitutional and legal system. In particular, these weaknesses have their primary sources in two of the principles that form the ideological basis of our state as set out in the preamble, namely, the first and the fourth principles.

The latter could easily be more clearly formulated as "democracy"; the former should be changed to make the separation between state and religion clear. This would take us well into the modern world of the third millennium, instead of being mired in the dark ages.

The writer is a political analyst, and a Ph.D graduate from the London School of Economics.