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Plurality, pluralism and modern democracy
The Indonesian public recently witnessed how the majority of members of their House of Representatives who voted against the 2008 Century Bank bailout celebrated their victory like a team of high school students cheering after having won a basketball match
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he Indonesian public recently witnessed how the majority of members of their House of Representatives who voted against the 2008 Century Bank bailout celebrated their victory like a team of high school students cheering after having won a basketball match.
As an anticlimax, the President delivered a “not guilty plea”-like speech that had the effect of proving the weak points in Indonesia’s hard-won democracy.
That is tragic enough. While the Indonesian people grabbed their political freedom from the authoritarian Soeharto regime 11 years ago with much suffering, we are still in limbo over how to make reasonable use of our painfully won freedom.
The fragmentary constellation of political forces crystallized in the House precisely reflects the “human condition” (Hannah Arendt, 1956) of an Indonesian pluralistic society that does not necessarily embrace pluralism.
In fact, the other way around: Indonesia’s political leadership, at the national as well as at the regional level, produced by the 11-year process of reformasi demonstrates that they are still trapped by an obsolete, pre-democratic, inward way of thinking.
Deep in their hearts, most Indonesians are yet to liberate themselves from the authoritarian subconsciousness when dealing with “the other”, which was a mentality prevalent during the era of Soeharto.
As a result, after 11 years we have yet to learn much about how to practice modern democracy. Although the Indonesian people have learned a lot, and quickly, about conducting civilized general elections, most of our politicians are novices in listening to “the other” and exchanging qualified argument.
Modern democracy requires us to know how to govern ourselves as a reasoning public, to differ in opinion constructively, and to conduct the uneasy and complex give-and-take practice of building fair consensus (John Shattuck, Testimony On Human Rights In Indonesia, 1998).
Indonesians, and particularly their elected political leadership, are yet to realize that the modern democracy that we are employing has its own stringent qualifications.
Let alone because it is being practiced by a society of more than 220 million people scattered in various geographical, sociological, religious and ideological spaces, with meager experience of self-government.
The plurality of a society may become advantageous; however, it requires that its people have the
capacity to respect pluralism, which in many respects implies accepting the coexistence of people with a variety of backgrounds and differing opinions.
As a matter of logic, absolute majority domination is unlikely in a pluralistic society, save if subdued by a dictatorship. If the mainstream of a pluralistic society thinks and behaves the way of a homogeneous one, they will find it difficult to build consensus and will only end up in the perennial quandary of making dispersed rather than consistent decisions.
We have left behind an authoritarian era that had produced a belying stability and ushered our people into a way of thinking that would not be commensurate to coping with the challenges we must face, nationally as well as globally.
To date we believe that democracy is the best systemic option among the poorer performing systems, although we are still unclear about which democracy we should develop that is commensurate with Indonesia’s specific requirements.
The first of the challenges we must cope with is the fact that Indonesian society, like many others in the world, is becoming more complex in itself.
Taking into account Indonesia’s population of more than 220 million, we must master a rather sophisticated self-government in order to prevent our sociological complexity turning into social anomaly.
The second challenge lies in our failure to realize how late we are in responding to the effects of the globalization process, already triggered in the mid-1970s.
The way Indonesian politicians responded to the coming into force of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area arrangement in January 2010 simply demonstrates that most of us are still day-dreaming amid the furor of rising cross-border regimes.
We have been oblivious of the changing and challenging international constellation when we cannot afford such negligence, indeed because we are not an island in the world.
Forget China or India; just think about Brazil which in the mid-1970s was at a similar stage to Indonesia in many respects. Both countries prevail over a vast territory with a large population and rich natural resources, the most significant difference being only in that Brazil is a continental, while Indonesia is a maritime, state.
The lesson from becoming aware of all the above lies in our obligation to listen to each other rather than closing our ears.
We need to think in broader schemes and longer terms rather than desiring to establish new provinces or separate new districts.
We must understand the coming of the metanational paradigm instead of bickering about primordial party interests.
We need the courage to admit that we have been left way behind in terms of global competition rather than being self-complacent about a historical past that remains debatable.
Modern democracy requires us to know how to govern ourselves as a reasoning public, to differ in opinion constructively.
The writer is a professor at the School of Philosophy, Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung.
