How free are Indonesians today?

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Mon, 06/05/2006 2:04 PM  |  Opinion

Roy Voragen, Jakarta

Almost a decade ago the dictator Soeharto stepped down and Indonesia started on the long journey of democratization and the rule of law -- a road which slowly meanders to a yet unknown future. What Indonesians want is freedom -- the freedom to live a life that is worth living. Are Indonesians becoming more free to live such a life?

Since 1998 many changes have occurred in Indonesia. Fareed Zakaria, political scientist and an editor of Newsweek, is perhaps too fast in concluding that these changes turned Indonesia into an non-liberal democracy. In The Future of Freedom he writes that Indonesia was more tolerant and secular when ruled by a strongman compared to now when Indonesia is a democracy. He forecasts pessimistically: ""If successful, the rise of political Islam in Indonesia will threaten the secular character of the country and breed secessionist movements that will threaten its unity.""

Dr. Timothy Lindsey, on the other hand, seems too fast in concluding that Indonesia now embraces liberal democratic principles. He writes: ""Yet within five years of the signing of the Bangkok Declaration (1993) Soeharto's Asian values discourse was gone from Indonesian public life, as suddenly as the 'old man' himself. And within nine years, Indonesia had reconstructed its Rechtsstaat on liberal democratic principles (see: Indonesia, Devaluing Asian Values, Rewriting Rule of Law, in: Peerenboom, R. (ed.), Asian Discourses on Rule of Law, Theories and Implementation of Rule of Law in twelve Asian Countries, France, and the U.S.).

Lindsey makes a legal normative point. Indeed it is impressive to see how, by example, the Constitution has been amended. The amended 1945 Constitution includes almost the complete list of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Constitution states that citizens are ""free to profess their religion and to worship in accordance with their religion.""

And an article in the next chapter states: ""The State guarantees all persons freedom of religion and freedom to worship according to their religion and belief."" With the following addition: ""The State shall be based upon the One and Only."" Indonesians are free to have a religion as long as they have a religion; and only five religions are recognized: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

Fareed Zakaria's point is that citizens should be able to enjoy their rights, i.e. real legal certainty. Incorporating freedom of religion, for example, in the Constitution is a start. Many Indonesians consider freedom in opposition to the state and identify freedom with civil society (research conducted by Demos shows this). But society is not necessarily civilized.

Anthropologist Robert Hefner writes in The Politics of Multiculturalism that ""the mere facts of structural ""autonomy"" and ""self-organization"" that theorists and activists celebrate as the essence of civil society do not in any sense guarantee that the attitudes or actions of civil society groupings will be inclusive or democratic."" Political scientist Daniel Lev continues in Law and State in Indonesia that ""most professionals, NGO activists, and interested students (in Indonesia) presuppose that politics is fundamentally dangerous, amoral, corrupting, and well worth avoiding."" Lev claims that this is the reason that ""there is no bridge between political power and reform activism.""

Freedom does not mean that the state is absent in society. The state has to guarantee everyone's freedom. The state should guarantee that all have the equal right to freedom by restricting its own actions, but, sometimes, also by limiting the actions of some citizens against other citizens.

When some members of society do not want to be civilized by threatening the freedom of others, the state has the duty to protect and prosecute. Even when something unlawful occurs it is the right of the state to act upon it and guarantee a fair trial, i.e. no one is allowed to take the law into one's own hands.

Democracy does not just mean that citizens are a floating mass of spectators and only have to get out of their comfortable sofa once in a while to vote for a neighborhood chief or presidential candidate. Democracy also means that citizens have to act in a democratic spirit, democracy cannot survive without a people behaving civilly.

Citizens should tolerate pluralism and thus each other's differences -- pluralism is an empirical given citizens have to cope with. Pluralism and rational disagreement about the truth are common features in today's societies, and to quote Hefner one more time: ""The question of how to achieve civility and inclusive citizenship in deeply plural societies is today a near-universal one.""

The Islam Defenders Front (FPI) is a good example of an intolerant civil society organization.

State representatives justify their inaction by claiming that no violence is used. But obstructing other people's actions is illegitimate. Azyumardi Azra, rector of Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN) in Jakarta, said that this is encouraged by the ""almost complete absence of law enforcement and, worse still, impunity.""

And ""the law enforcement vacuum has been an important raison d'etre for certain radical groups to take the law into their own hands through unlawful activities (The Jakarta Post, Dec. 30, 2005)."" His conclusion: Indonesia is turning into a ""mobocracy"" (the Post, April 26, 2006). And worse still: the ones who are attacked are blamed for inciting social disorder.

Is Indonesia already a genuine democracy where all Indonesians can live in freedom and pursue a life worth living? No, not yet. Should Indonesians be pessimistic? No, not yet, but cautious.

The writer teaches philosophy at the University of Indonesia, Depok, West Java.

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