Wanted: Democratic imagination

Boni Hargens ,  Jakarta   |  Thu, 10/09/2008 10:29 AM  |  Opinion

When 21 women were killed in a stampede to received Rp 30,000 in alms each from a wealthy Muslim in Pasuruan, East Java, our political elite, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, competed to express their empathy to poor people. The government became a target for critics from many parties.

The government is regarded as lacking concern for people's welfare. But is it also the government's problem?

There is still no democratic imagination among our elites. Democratic imagination refers to a set of capabilities to imagine the essence of basic principles like common good, justice, deliberation and equality.

Each one of us can look at the paradox of deliberative democracy in this country: The five-year elections are always enthusiastically greeted and exercised, but the Pandora's box of poverty and economic discrepancies are poorly addressed.

Undoubtedly imagination is a fundamental force behind building a democracy. Imagination is a spirit that inspires political performance. If one's imagination goes to the line of traditional values, he or she will tend to be an authoritarian person. In contrast, if his or her imagination is about democratic spirit, he or she will have to be a democratic person.

Our political elites lack vision, courage and self-determination. Political corruption, bribery, feudalistic governments and a corrupt bureaucracy indicate the death of democracy in this country.

In The Return of History and the End of Dreams (2008), Robert Kagan states that communism is of course dead, but a new contest between western liberalism and the great eastern autocracies of Russia and China has re-injected ideology into geopolitics.

Radical Islamists are waging a violent struggle against modern secular cultures and powers that have, in their view, dominated, penetrated and polluted their Islamic world. Kagan masterfully challenges liberal democratic countries to choose whether they want to shape history or let others shape it for them.

Juxtaposing Kagan's argument with what happens in Indonesia, there is a firm conclusion that democracy in Indonesia is still at a very complicated stage.

For 63 years since our independence in 1945, we have been successfully building a procedural democracy while substance has been ignored. Our democracy runs without spirit. The fate of democracy is not simply driven by abstract historical and structural forces, as some scholars have said. The spirit of democracy is a consequence of struggle, strategy, ingenuity, vision, courage, conviction, compromise and choices by human actors.

How should we open Pandora's box? In other words, how do we revitalize the spirit of our endangered democracy?

There are at least at three realms that we need to revitalize: the realm of elites, the realm of civil society and the realm of the market.

The core notion of deliberative democracy is people's participation. Such participation is not only for articulating their needs and aspirations, but to ensure the government will struggle for the good of all people.

In Indonesia, however, power runs more for the sake of the political elite. Civil society as the subject of democracy has no strength to control, criticize and supervise power.

This of course causes stagnancy of democratization. The dark past of Soehartoism (1966-1998) causes an additional burden. Most of us blamed Soeharto for the collapse of democratization in Indonesia, but we should notice that political parties' poor performance was another fundamental reason.

The market also has to take part in revitalizing the spirit of democracy. As one important pillar of democratization pyramid, the market should be utilized to develop democracy and contribute to creating public welfare or common good.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs are often described the effective way to oblige corporations to play their role in the betterment of public welfare. But how effective is the program?

Revitalizing the spirit of democracy in our country is a complicated mission, but it must be accomplished to prevent future tragedies like the stampede in Pasuruan.

The writer is a lecturer at Department of Political Science, University of Indonesia and is Executive Director of Pusat Pengkajian Strategis Merdeka.

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