Democracy still best system to contain violence: Scholars

Lilian Budianto ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Fri, 06/27/2008 10:06 AM  |  Headlines

Democracy is still the best system for solving the problems faced by developing countries, despite its deficiencies, scholars said at an international conference here on Thursday.

SPEAKING IN LINE: A Syafii Maarif(center), the founder of the Maarif Institute for Culture, speaks on the role of religion in combating violence during the World Peace Forum in Jakarta on Thursday. (JP/R. Berto Wedhatama) 

Azyumardi Azra, director of graduate school at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta, said during the second World Peace Forum that democracy was still the best system for solving problems faced by a country, including the containment of violence.

He said the benefits democracy offered included freedom of speech and the peaceful settlement of conflicts to an extent that did not exist in any other system, including the Islamic state.

Some recent surveys here have indicated growing support for an Islamic state and the imposition of sharia, or Islamic law.

In a survey by Roy Morgan Research, involving 8,000 respondents from across the country, 52 percent of respondents supported the imposition of sharia in their area.

Azyumardi said when violence occurred within democratic countries, the problem rested on the absence of civic culture, good governance, consistent law enforcement and equitable socio-economic development.

"Democracy cannot work in isolation," he said.

He said communal tensions frequently erupted because people had lost their trust in the government and sought to settle problems on their own.

"However, the most important element to guarantee democracy is the availability of civic society. Even when the government fails people and law enforcement is unreliable, people living within a mature civic society would never resort to violence," he said.

At the same forum, Rizal Sukma, deputy executive director of the Jakarta-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said democracy theoretically should be able to keep people from resorting to violence because it offered every citizen the opportunity to make himself heard when faced with problems.

"We have learned that violence is, among other things, rooted in political and economic inequality amid the absence of proper institutions. If the root cause is, for example, poverty, hungry people in democratic countries should be able to freely voice their problems and urge the government to take measures to address the issue," he said.

He said democracy should not be blamed if a small number of countries adopting the system had yet to show any significant improvements in terms of development indicators.

"People have asked whether democracy leads to poverty, and why Indonesia, 10 years after the fall of authoritarian rule, has yet to prosper.

"The problem is not in democracy but economic policy," he said.

He said the benefits of democracy in Indonesia had yet to be fully reaped even after the fall of the authoritarian government because democracy was a time-consuming process.

He added that doubt about the success of democracy were normal during times of transition.

American Ambassador to Indonesia Cameron R. Hume said democracy was not a self-regulated system and had to be accompanied by the full exercise of citizen rights.

"If people do not have the space to express their thoughts, their beliefs, there will be no peace," he said.

He pointed to the successful settlement of the Aceh conflict as an example of what democracy can produce.

Another speaker, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, chairman of the Ibn Khaldun Center in Turkey, said democracy could reduce violence but not eliminate it.

"Democracy should be perceived as a way to enable people to have more choices and possibility in their lives. It is not a system that guarantee results," he said.

Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved.