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Jakarta Post

E-Democracy as Indonesia'€™s new democratic face

On the sidelines of the recent APEC Summit in Beijing, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo conveyed to his US counterpart President Barack Obama that Indonesia showed that Islam and democracy could coexist

Purna Cita Nugraha and Andi Sparringa (The Jakarta Post)
Washington DC
Thu, November 27, 2014

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E-Democracy as Indonesia'€™s  new democratic face

O

n the sidelines of the recent APEC Summit in Beijing, President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo conveyed to his US counterpart President Barack Obama that Indonesia showed that Islam and democracy could coexist.

Democracy, Islam and the interplay between the two have been glorified as our global brand. In the past, some even added '€œmodernity'€ to the formula.

However, there is so much more meaning to our present democracy than before.

Hence, we need a new image that reflects our present day democracy in Indonesia. We need new innovations to go the extra mile. We need to reveal another face of our democracy. The question is how?

We should go for e-democracy.

E-democracy is the use of digital and electronic means by the government to accommodate greater participation in governance. It is simply the use of various technology tools as effective platforms to facilitate democratic activities.

In Jokowi'€™s '€œmission and vision'€ and programs of action he envisioned that political sovereignty is based on representative deliberation. People'€™s sovereignty will be the character, value and spirit of our democracy.

The promotion of '€œpeople'€™s democracy'€ will apparently be one of Indonesia'€™s national priorities for the next five years. It implies that Indonesia must make effective democratic decisions and reintegrate constitutional democratic ideals into the practice of democracy in all aspects.

Therefore, in today'€™s sophisticated information age, '€œe-democracy'€ is the appropriate and the new alternative tool to achieve such goals.

Though Indonesia is the world'€™s third-largest democracy in terms of the actual practice of e-democracy and Internet penetration, Indonesia is still far behind Japan, Brazil, Germany, UK, France, Mexico and South Korea.

According to Internet Live Stats, Indonesia is ranked 13th after South Korea. With an estimated total population of 253 million people, 42 million of them are active Internet users or netizens. This implies that Internet penetration is merely a low 17 percent of our total population. Hence, the possibility of maximizing penetration to the rest of the country'€™s 210 million inhabitants is a staggering 500 percent.

Take South Korea. Its internet penetration is approximately 92 percent of the total estimated population. From 49.5 million people, 46 million of them are netizens.

Indonesia needs to also aspire to be the world'€™s third-largest e-democracy. In order to do so, Indonesia should increase its Internet penetration to 50 percent of its total estimated population. With the expected number of 126 million netizens, Indonesia will be able to work its way up to fourth rank after China, United States and India.

However, since many countries do not consider China a democracy, Indonesia will automatically move to third rank after India and become the world'€™s third-largest e-democracy.

To achieve that status, Indonesia must ensure a free and open Internet. Internet should be an equal and open environment for citizens to share ideas, perspectives and provide constructive input to our government.

However, our government must increase its commitment to preserving that freedom and come up with free and open Internet policies.

Under Jokowi, Indonesia must raise the political will to provide a national legal system to develop e-democracy, increase its Internet penetration and come up with new policies to ensure free and open Internet.

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Purna Cita Nugraha, who holds a doctoral degree in cyber law from Padjadjaran University, is an Indonesian diplomat.
Andi Sparringa holds a master'€™s of law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
Both are participating in the President'€™s Speech Writing Program at Georgetown University.

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