The choice is ours

There is a saying, ascribed to the great German poet and thinker Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which our late first vice president Mohamad Hatta was fond of quoting: Eine grosze Epoche hat das Jahrhundert geboren, aber die grosze Epoche findet eines kleines Geschlecht. Paraphrased roughly in English, the phrase means that the century has given birth to a great era, but this era is met by an unworthy generation.

For the Indonesian independence movement, those days around the middle of August 1945 -- that crucial period around the time when the mighty Japanese empire crumbled in the blinding flash of the world's first atom bomb dropped over Hiroshima -- indeed opened a new era brimming with hope and opportunity.

What Hatta meant to achieve by quoting Goethe was to remind Indonesians that opportunity by itself does not generate change for the better. A generation of Indonesians must be on hand to recognize and grab the opportunities that are presented and work to the best of its ability -- with courage, wisdom, perseverance and dedication -- to build a new society based on the universal humanitarian ideals of freedom, justice and prosperity for all.

Today, 53 years after our founding fathers laid the groundwork for such an ideal society, Indonesians find themselves once again facing such a momentous opportunity in their nation's relatively brief history. After more than two decades of relative affluence, a devastating economic crisis that began a little more than a year ago has suddenly brought home the fact that the successes of development which the regime had been touting were largely illusory.

As the country has found itself unable to repay the mountain of foreign debt the government and private sector had collected over the years, factories and businesses have been forced to lay off workers while many have actually ground to a standstill. Unemployment and poverty levels have surged to record heights to add fuel to long pent-up feelings of popular discontent. Demands for change, spearheaded by students and other young civil rights activists, swelled into a flood of protest demonstrations in May, bringing about the downfall of a repressive regime.

Understandably, this unexpected turn in the course of the country's history has brought some significant consequences for the nation. Cases of bureaucratic mismanagement, long kept under cover by the previous regime and now brought to light, have led to demands for greater governmental transparency and accountability. The disclosure of gross human rights abuses committed under the regime has led to demands for the military to redefine its all-encompassing role in the country's social and political life.

The momentum in the country's movement toward change, though not fast enough for many, will nevertheless be hard to stem now that it has been set in motion. Yet, Indonesians must be careful to learn from history and avoid the precarious pitfalls of bigotry and divisive sectarianism. Preserving unity and cohesion amid democratic change is an essential prerequisite for such change to succeed.

Indonesia can count itself fortunate indeed that, like in those early days of independence in August 1945, it can rely on the courage and dedication of so many people of its younger generation who are ready and willing to offer their selfless services to the people and the nation. Theirs is a generation not unworthy of greeting our new opportunities.

Like then, Indonesia now faces a momentous stage in its history. At stake is the freedom, not just of the country, but of its people. As in 1945, it is important that this generation keep in mind that freedom -- whether a nation's or an individual's -- is not something that can be taken for granted but has to be continually worked for. This is an opportunity that must not be allowed to slip by, or repression might return again -- perhaps sooner than we think. The choice is ours.