YouthSays | YouthSays, Indonesia’s Youth Opinion Community

YouthSays | YouthSays, Indonesia’s Youth Opinion Community.

Indonesia’s Quest of Full-fledged Democracy

It is true and sad that democracy that we admire since the reformation era in 1998 bring us to the deepest sorrow nowadays. Blood spillage, damage of public facilities, and curse to the government are happened in this country many times in many places. And few days ago, we got awful news from the media that this country had to sacrifice another victim to the sake of democracy. The tragedy of the death of the Head of DPRD in North Sumatera shocked us and also generates us to think hundred times about the democracy itself. Is this democracy that we live in? Is this democracy that we desire? Is this the real democracy that we wish to preserve?

If I have to answer those questions, I would say NO! Democracy that I learnt in the college, or heard and saw in TV is not like this. But people who think that they fully understand about this ideology said that this is the sacrifice that we have to pay for. No, I don’t think so. More than ten years we live in this situation, and maybe more than ten thousands people were killed on this situation. Is this democracy that we wish for?

In the process to achieve the full-fledged democracy, our own style of democracy, we always remind ourselves about the importance of freedom of expressions. The stakeholders of this country said that ‘We are free to make an opinion!’, ‘We are free to being different!’, ‘We are free to protest!’ and ‘We are free to criticize’. But, do they really know about the real sense of the freedom itself? Do they fully understand how to protest and criticize in the ethics of democracy? I don’t think so. People in this country are too obsessed of being democrats. People in this country are too mesmerized of having a total freedom in their life. Eventually, those facts generate our people to become stubborn, superficial, and also dull.

Democracy is shouted everywhere, the labors, the political activists, the political parties, the university students, or even the school kids. They demonstrate their opinion, their claim, and also protest to the government. I do agree with them. I believe, by demonstrating our thoughts, feelings, and opinion to the public (particularly the government), will synchronize the process of development of democracy itself. In the process of democracy, we need the active participation of the civil society, and it happens in our country. But in reality, what we saw in the media shows us about the way they demonstrate their thoughts could be considered as a form of anarchism. People who admit that they are a university students are do the damage of public facilities, punch the police officers, or even burn some of public facilities and always make a traffic jam. So, is this the real democracy that we want? I don’t think so. The death of the Head of DPRD in North Sumatera few days ago proved us that we experienced a wrong direct of democracy. Democracy is an alibi for people who don’t have responsibility of their act. They act out of the blue and act uncontrolled. Is this democracy that we fight for? I don’t think so.

Those realities made us think hard about who’s going to take the responsibility to educate the people and to teach them about the ethics of democracy itself. In my opinion, besides the government, the education system also takes an important part to raise people awareness about the real sense of democracy. Our young generation has to understand about the ethics of democracy. Freedom as the vital element of democracy has to be characterized as a loosely and tightly coupled. Loosely could be defined in the sense of people exemption to express thoughts, opinion and action. And tightly could be defined as a pool of freedom that should be respected by people who exercised their freedom. So the freedom that we got has to abide the law and respect to other interests. If the people in this country are fully understand about this and implement this behavior, so there will no people movement that will harm our democracy. And there will no tragedy as we experienced in North Sumatera few days ago.

At the end, the active roles of the government and accompanied by the effectiveness of education system will increase the awareness of the real sense of freedom expressions and also educate them about the ethics of democracy itself. And if it’s not running effectively, I think we need the codes of conducts to construct the comprehensible rules of game of democracy. By having these codes of conducts, I think we would experience the peaceful democracy without sacrificing other victims. And the full-fledged democracy that we’re dreaming of would be achieved. And this is the real democracy that we need, want and wish for.