Democracy cultural, not only political

Mochtar Buchori ,  Jakarta   |  Thu, 04/03/2008 1:35 AM  |  Opinion

I no longer remember who originally said it, but it was a beautiful statement. It says that whereas the United States is an old state with a young culture, Indonesia is a young state with an old culture. Was it the late Professor Clifford Geertz?

Never mind who* It is not important. What is important is that we catch the meaning of this statement; that we draw from it an idea of the obstacles faced by the country in its effort to build democracy.

Not too many Indonesians of the present generation realize that during the first years of our independence the idea of "government by the people" was considered absurd by certain groups of people. "How can you ask the people to govern the country? We, ordinary people, expect to be governed, not to govern. It is the president and the state ministers who should do the governing, and not the people." Such was the common attitude of the people in Javanese villages.

This is just one illustration concerning the huge cultural problem faced by Indonesia in the building of democracy. It means the effort to build democracy in Indonesia has been thwarted by two opposing forces, the force to push the society toward a genuine democracy on the one hand and the force to protect the society from the confusion and chaos that so often arise in new democracies on the other.

It looked thus as if the country was reluctant to abandon the traditional society that had provided tranquility, stability and harmony. These three features have been considered the "true character" of Indonesian society. What the country wanted seemed to be change without too much chaos.

It has been the tension between these two opposing forces that has made our efforts to build democracy move slowly, haltingly and unevenly. I think the process of building democracy in Indonesia will remain this way until we find the right balance between our desire to become democratic and our wish to retain our national identity. The passage towards modern democratic Indonesia without losing its basic character demands constant navigation of the main forces within our culture.

There is still another reason why the growth of our democracy has been slow. As I see it, so far we have viewed the task of building democracy primarily as a political assignment, a task of building political parties capable of marshaling support from the masses in society. It would be more correct to view the task of building democracy as a cultural assignment, namely the assignment to persuade the people to change their lifestyles, to change their perceptions of life, to change their dreams about life.

The essence of democracy as a political system is that the management of a community, a society and a country be administered by the elected representatives of the people. This principle must be observed whenever the issue of forming a new government arises, be it a new government for a local community, for a regional area or for a national state.

Within this definition, however, there is the philosophical view that all human beings are endowed with human dignity and the capability to govern. Every human being has certain basic rights in his or her life. Those who deny another human being these basic rights are violating a basic human law, are in essence inhuman and are therefore antidemocratic. The place a democratic society assigns to its members is determined by the degree of humanity that each person exhibits in his or her life.

Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948, popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi) put this principle the following way: "My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest should have the same opportunity as the strongest. This can never happen except through nonviolence." Unlike the case in feudal societies, thus, the merit of a person is not determined by inherited wealth or nobility.

Once this basic view is accepted it will determine many things in a person's life: his or her value system, his or her relationship toward others and his or her view toward jobs. Even one's format of politeness or civility will be influenced by the degree of one's acceptance of democracy.

A genuine acceptance of democracy will redefine the inner being of a person. This means that democratizing a society is basically transforming it into a new society that is entirely different in character and in appearance from the old one.

This can materialize only if leaders of democracy have a good knowledge of the past and a realistic vision of the future. Alas, this is often not the case. As Alexis de Toqueville (1805 -1859) once observed, "Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be".

Our political leaders, then and now, miss this basic view of democracy. What preoccupied them most at the beginning of the struggle for independence was how to get rid of colonial rule.

The time has come that we reexamine the model of democracy we are trying to build. I think the time has come that we shift from the idea of building a political democracy to building a cultural democracy. This new culture of democracy will then replace the old feudal culture and prevent the rise of totalitarian culture.

The writer holds a PhD in education from Harvard University.

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