We often claim to be the largest moderate Muslim-majority country on earth on the path toward becoming the third-largest democracy in the world. Indonesia’s foreign policy over the last eight years or so has been, among others, geared toward projecting that image onto the international stage. Indeed, a foreign policy document on public diplomacy published by Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry states the government seeks to promote “a new face of Indonesia, which is moderate, democratic and progressive”.
Indonesia’s public diplomacy under former foreign minister Hassan Wirajuda has achieved precisely that. Democracy and moderate Islam have become associated with post-Soeharto Indonesia. World leaders often praised Indonesia as an exemplary model where democracy, modernity and Islam go hand in hand. Some, including people within the Indonesian government, even began to urge the country to play a larger role to act as a bridge between the Muslim world and the West.
To a certain degree, such image and policy direction is indeed a noble one. It reflected Indonesia’s own reality at home. The majority of Indonesian Muslims are indeed moderate in nature, and eschew violence as an instrument to resolve problems, conflict and differences. The majority of Indonesian Muslims do prefer democracy over the authoritarian system. They genuinely believe that democracy works better for Indonesia’s political life.
However, it seems that the challenge of maintaining such achievements is far more difficult than the task of attaining them. Our democracy is far from perfect and continuously under attack by a host of problems. One of the most severe problems has been, and still is, our inability to reform justice and law enforcement institutions. These institutions remain plagued by major cases of corruption and incompetence. Our government and politicians are often ridiculed by the people. The government often falters in implementing its own policies and decisions.
Challenges to the moderate nature of Indonesia’s Islam are also on the rise. The use of violence by one religious group against another often takes place unabated, with the police often unable to enforce the law and failing to exercise the responsibility to protect citizens. Worse, as feared by Muhammadiyah chairman Din Syamsuddin recently, Indonesia is still threatened by inter-religious tension and conflict.
According to Din, the use of violence in the name of religion remains a major source of the problem. The repeated calls by moderate Muslim leaders for the police to act firmly to enforce the law seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
The government needs to take into account those problems seriously, and begin to formulate a coherent policy to address them. The government needs to make good on their anticorruption promises, and move swiftly to clean up justice and law enforcement agencies. As a start, the government needs to force the police to be more open and transparent regarding the reports about suspicious personal accounts of some high-ranking police officers. The government needs to step up its efforts to reform the justice sector.
More importantly, the government needs to realize that these problems may be internal in nature, but the implications could well be beyond our borders. Many Indonesians — especially within the Foreign Ministry, moderate Muslim circles and pro-democracy civil society groups — have worked hard to restore Indonesia’s standing and image in the eyes of the international community since 1998. The government should not forget that it is democracy and moderate Islam that give a new Indonesia the respect it receives from the international community.
Now that international image of Indonesia is at stake. We should not let it be taken away from us. We should not let our democratic achievement be undermined by small anti-reform forces, both within and outside the government. The failure to address the challenges to our democracy and to our very nature as a moderate Muslim nation would surely bring us back to the status of a pariah state among nations.
The rest of the world, especially in East Asia, is marching forward toward economic and technological progress in this 21st century. If Indonesia cannot address and resolve the problem of corruption and religious intolerance at home, then it will certainly be left behind. If we do not start addressing these problems seriously, we will surely be on the wrong side of history. And, that will put us into the trash bin of history.
The writer is the executive director of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta.
