Asher Tauran (not verified) — Sun, 10/19/2008 - 12:19am

Indonesia as a UN member Nation

The last paragraph of the article "Indonesia urges UN to abolish abuse of veto right" is not very clear. Does the minister suggest that the UN council's representation should be based on religious affiliation besides geographical parameters ? What more parameters does he have in mind that qualifies or not. I thought the UN was about nations represenating their citizens. The minister does have a point though. It should be a democratic representation where "minority representation" in a way should be protected and majority representation should rule. But what he is stressing I think, is the issue of classification of nations within the UN council. If the geographical classification is considered unfair, why would one based on religiosity be any better ? If we talk about nations we talk about nationality and if he suggest one nation one vote democracy, one might carry the issue further and question whether the nations represented in the UN have respected this form of democracy in the first place with regard to their own citizens they claim to represent. It is cynical to ask the UN to commit to democratic values when quite a number of the UN family denied this possibility for their own, and autocratic regimes simply were allowed to join. Indonesia of early UN membership could hardly be called democratic as they were very much under colonial rule. But once "liberated", its own process of national unification was not exactly a smooth process of democratic expiration, but rather a form of autocratic imposed will of the elite, claiming legitimate representation and which was expected to be supported by the masses with a common goal (getting rid of the Dutch and anything even remotely sounding colonial).
During the French revolution democracy was called "the will of the ignorant majority", by the clergy, gentry and/or nobility. And as such many countries, espescially in Europe were formed by that same "ignorant majority". Had it not been for these plebeians we still would have had some form of absolutism or autocracy today. When much of the world was trying to rid itself from colonial rule, the UN was well represented by those repressive countries. The point Minister Hassan is making is therefore very true. The UN is all but a democratic institution. The UN started off in a very "undemocratic way" like many of their member Nations. Fortunately many member countries slowly adopted democratic values, including Indonesia today, and when Minister Hassan suggests that majority should rule and 1,1 billion Muslim's must be represented in the UN Security Council I am afraid he suggests Muslims worldwide can be classified as legitimate "Muslim nations" bearing nation state identities rather than a transnational religion. What if nations with majority Christian, Budhist, Hinduist, Confucian and other religions would apply the same line of reasoning? Then obviously the whole idea of United Nations would not be about Nations, but about religions.I hope the minister is not suggesting a world order classification along those lines. I would rather see our country on equal terms with any other country in the world and not a leader of some sub-catagory group of countries that suggests some special status among Nations. Such a self imposed status would only set us apart and by definition be discriminative in nature and even hinting at some other form of veto. If the Minister would like to talk on behalf of 1,1 billion Muslims world wide so be it, but I would rather have him exercise his legitimate right and obligation to talk on behalf of our country Indonesia and us Indonesians. I think our taxes paid are very well spend if ALL Indonesian people have the feeling that we, ALL Indonesians are represented by their government at the UN regardless of the size of their nose or path to eternity.

Ayuna (not verified) — Sun, 09/28/2008 - 6:32pm

moslems maybe quite strong inside Indonesia, but when talking with focus on moslems in a stage like UN, the speech sounds like a fool's speech...people will tell,"and, so what?"