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.