Turning personal cult mood into democracy

Turning personal cult mood into democracy

By Mochtar Buchori

DENPASAR (JP); Why have people joined Megawati's faction of
the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI Perjuangan)? Is it because
they worship Megawati, or because they are committed to
democracy? Isn't it dangerous if people join PDI Perjuangan
because they worship Megawati?

I have been asked these questions so many times by so many
people; from broadcasters at the BBC, both in the English and
Indonesian programs, to foreign journalists based in Indonesia,
foreign academics who visited Megawati's PDI congress here,
Indonesian journalists who look very democratic, to members of an
association of expatriate women who are curious about Megawati's
personality.

To be honest, I do not have enough information to answer these
questions accurately. What I know is that people have joined PDI
Perjuangan or have given their sympathy to Megawati for various
different reasons.

There are a great number of people who have decided to support
Megawati because she is Sukarno's daughter and they look upon her
as an icon of Indonesian nationalism. Next to this group, there
are a great deal of people who have joined Megawati's PDI because
they trust her, admire her and also because they believe she can
bring about significant improvements in our societal conditions.

Is that individual worship, a personal cult? May be so. But
there are also people who have decided to join Megawati because
they see in her a leader who has the courage to stand up against
arbitrary wrongdoing perpetrated by the power holders from the
Soeharto regime. In the eyes of such followers, until today,
Megawati is still crusading against injustice.

I, for one, decided to join Megawati's forces in 1994 not
because I worship her. I have admired her, yes, but not worship
her. Individual worship is a thing of the distant past in my
life. I joined Megawati's PDI because at that time I saw her as
the only party leader who really cares for democracy.

After being a member of Golkar for twelve years I was
convinced that Golkar was not genuinely interested in building
democracy in Indonesia. What I saw in Golkar at that time was a
pure political machine serving the interests of the Soeharto
regime.

I agree, that it is indeed dangerous if people join Megawati's
PDI for the sole reason that they worship her. What is to be done
in such a case?

The party must guide and educate such followers to gradually
shift their loyalty, from being loyal to the person Megawati to
being loyal to the ideal of democracy.

This is a process which must be attempted willfully and
consciously and not taken for granted. Such a psychological
process never occurs automatically.

It is like the process of guiding children to respect and
uphold values and norms. If at the beginning stage children learn
to obey their parents and teachers, slowly but consistently they
must learn to obey values and norms.

At some point in their life they must understand that their
childhood respect for parents and teachers represented their
respect for values and norms that their parents and teachers
stood for.

Attempting such a process and keeping such a process alive is
the essence of education towards adulthood. It is the moral
obligation of PDI and other political parties to bring their less
enlightened members to political adulthood.

Another question that I have been frequently asked is whether
Megawati is a person who can really be considered democratic.

This question is especially popular among foreigners,
journalists and non-journalists alike. They point at her
lifestyle, at her fancy for luxurious things and at her seeming
lack of familiarity with the realities of life among the poor, as
indications supporting their belief that she is not a true
democrat, but a person with strong feudalistic inclinations.

I don't know! I don't think it is ethical for me to judge the
category of Megawati's personal value systems along the feudal-
democracy continuum. I still believe that she is committed to
democracy. If at some point later I am no longer sure that she is
still a democrat, then what I have to do is to ask her that
question bluntly but privately, and remind her that we have to
honor our pledge to promote democracy for the sake of providing
the future generations with enough grounds to build a really
decent society in this country.

Democracy is not an all-or-none thing. Democracy is also not
only a political system. It is a way of life that at the end
constitutes the basis for democratic political systems.

And if I understand democracy well, its very essence is
respect for other human beings, irrespective of religion, race,
social status and wealth.

In this sense, it is impossible to have a democratic society
in Indonesia if the majority of the Indonesian people, especially
its elite and its leaders, do not share personal value systems
which make respect for other human beings an imperative.

And it is precisely this particular value which is lacking in
other systems, including feudalism. For this reason I believe
that every Indonesian who spent some part of his or her life in
an environment imbued with feudalistic practices must have traces
of feudalism in him or her.

Even within the most democratic Indonesians of the "older
generations", I think there are personal inclinations that are
incompatible with democratic practices, especially if measured
with yardsticks commonly used in older democratic societies.

The point is therefore not whether a person is sufficiently
democratic at a given stage in his or her life, but whether he or
she becomes increasingly more democratic or increasingly anti-
democratic during his or her lifetime.

If this country is to develop into a genuinely democratic
society it is the duty of every citizen to continuously reexamine
and increase his or her commitment to democratic values.

It is also the civic duty of every Indonesian citizen to help
his or her fellow Indonesians to become more democratic. Merely
judging others as non-democratic or insufficiently democratic
does not contribute anything to the building of democracy.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.