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Dealing with antidemocratic voices
Democracy is to be earned, rather than given. Unfortunately, Indonesia has forgotten the high price that it has had to pay to get to where it is now.
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Democracy under threat: Demonstrators protest at the Constitutional Court in Jakarta against the implementation of the Legislative Insitutions ( MD3 ) Law. The protesters claimed the law undermined democracy. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
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emocracy is to be earned, rather than given. For Indonesia, this statement is self-evident. The transition from the chaotic Old Order to the militaristic New Order and, then to the period of Reformasi (Reformation) required a great amount of sacrifice in “blood, toil, tears and sweat”. Unfortunately, Indonesia has forgotten the high price that it has had to pay to get to where it is now. Today’s political strategy of infusing more conservative values into the Criminal Code (KUHP) is just another case in point. The emblematic case is the successful bid of Anies Baswedan, a former Muslim intellectual, to be elected Jakarta’s number-one politician by turning into a gung-ho populist.
In this mold, the fact that secular nationalist politician Ichsan Soelistio of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) recently confirmed that the controversial KUHP bill will be drafted in a consensus, is unequivocally alarming. Meaning, the nationalists, the only available antidote to the holier-than-thou politics of certain Muslim clerics, have “voluntarily” waived their political badge. The take-home message of this: Taking a stance against intolerance in today’s Indonesia is politically costly. It goes against the grain to contravene the conservatism that is currently gaining ground. So, what does the future hold for Indonesian democracy?
First, the institutional building of the Reformasi era was clearly problematic in every sense of the word. Presidentialism, like many other human inventions, is not flawless. The unnecessary mythologizing of the 1945 Constitution and its presidential system has unwittingly incapacitated the reform enterprise from going into full swing. Worse, Indonesian pundits’ unabashed admiration of the United States’ system has aggravated further the already strained limits of public debate with regards to what direction institutional reform should take.
At its heart, presidentialism is another form of populist democracy where the ultimate (popular) will is culminated in the institution of the presidency. Thus, it is logical to present a fixed and stable term for the presidency.
