n 1979, then president Soeharto set up the Supervisory Body for the Implementation of the Guide to Realization and Implementation of Pancasila (BP7), a powerful body tasked with indoctrinating the country’s citizens in the five founding principles of Pancasila, in a bid to tighten his political grip in the face of rising opposition.
For the next two decades, the country’s citizens, from students to diplomats, were subjected to compulsory instruction on the New Order’s version of Pancasila.
Following President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s decision on Thursday, citizens will once again have to go through these motions.
In Jakarta, leading an emotional ceremony at the Pancasila Building, where founding father and first president Sukarno introduced the five concepts as the country’s ideology on June 1, 1945, Jokowi announced that he had issued a presidential regulation to establish a working unit on the implementation of Pancasila.
The President said the agency would be tasked with ensuring that all government programs were consistent with the values enshrined in Pancasila.
Jokowi said the agency was what the country needed right now as it was confronted with anti-Pancasila groups and organizations that could pose threats to the country’s unity.
Jokowi recently announced that he would disband the Islamist group Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) and pledged to move against any other organizations he considered to be threats to national unity.
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