Sixty years of Indonesian independence

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.