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.