The 'musyawarah' spirit

The 'musyawarah' spirit

Whatever happened to the spirit of musyawarah? This question
about an age-old Indonesian tradition of settling differences
through deliberations was asked by Minister of Defense and
Security Edi Sudradjat during a hearing with the House of
Representatives on Wednesday. As reported in this newspaper
yesterday, the retired Army general complained during the hearing
reviewing the security situation with the House's Commission I
about the fading spirit of musyawarah. The concern was widely
shared by many members of the commission. Gen. Edi reflected that
musyawarah is what keeps people together in a group, organization
or community. It acts like a glue.

Nobody can deny that musyawarah is preferred over other
alternatives in resolving differences; certainly over the use of
voting, or worse still, the use of force and violence. Our
founding fathers recognized the virtues of this principle when
they inserted musyawarah untuk mencapai mufakat (deliberation to
reach consensus) as the fourth of the five principles in the
state ideology Pancasila. In a country as diverse in terms of
cultural, ethnical, racial and religious backgrounds as ours,
musyawarah becomes the cornerstone of our democracy.

It is through musyawarah that opposing parties work out their
differences. The act of deliberation is an expression of goodwill
on the part of the conflicting parties to work towards a
solution. Musyawarah is a give-and-take process in order to come
to an arrangement agreeable to all parties. There are no
differences, however sharp they may be, that cannot be resolved
through musyawarah, as long as all parties show goodwill, so the
proponents of the concept argue.

Gen. Edi made no reference to any particular case when he
raised his concern on Wednesday. But he did say that the current
bickering in many organizations stems from the members' inability
to resolve differences through deliberations.

We could not help but link his statement to the conflict in
the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), if only because the calls
for musyawarah by senior government officials over the past two
weeks have been directed at the bickering leaders of this
minority party.

It is apparent that both camps in the conflict have neglected
the musyawarah principle. We recall that just as the breakaway
PDI members were preparing to hold their congress to oust
Megawati Soekarnoputri from the leadership last week, a number of
senior statesmen were making eleventh-hour appeals for them to
pursue the musyawarah course. They ignored the appeal and went
ahead with the congress, with support from the Ministry of Home
Affairs and the Armed Forces.

Now that the PDI rebels have elected Soerjadi to lead the
party and the government and the military have given their
recognition in preference over Megawati, the chorus for
musyawarah from government officials was renewed. This time,
Megawati and her supporters ignored the appeal and announced
their intention to sue the government and the Soerjadi camp.

At this late stage of the PDI conflict, the question to ask is
not about what has happened to musyawarah, but rather whether
musyawarah had been given a chance to work in the first place.
The hasty official support of the congress and recognition of its
results clearly indicate that musyawarah was never given a chance
at all. Now that the damage is done, it would be unreasonable to
place the burden to start the process of dialog solely on
Megawati and Soerjadi when third party interests seem to have
contributed to muddling the current conflict.

As stated above, for musyawarah to take place at all, there
must be goodwill on behalf of the conflicting parties, and this
means not only the two rival PDI camps, but also those third
parties who may have had a hand in the conflict. Without this
goodwill, musyawarah cannot be expected to work, and the best one
could hope for is for an appearance of musyawarah. This will
compound rather than solve problems.