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.

Good Governance In Indonesia and Its Challenges

Lately, the terms “governance” and “good governance” are increasingly being used in development literatures. Bad governance is progressively regarded as one of the main causes of “all evil” within our societies. Major donors and international financial institutions often give their aid and loans based on the condition that reforms which ensure “good governance” are carried out.[1]

Good governance is one of the most common terms in the post Soeharto’s era.[2] But actually we do not know exactly the firm definition of it. According to the World Bank, Good Governance has to have three aspects;[3] first, the form of political regime; second, the process by which authority is exercised in the management of a country’s social and economic resources for development. Third, the capacity of the government to design, formulate and implement policies and discharge functions. Good governance can be defined as a mechanism of managing resources, either in substances or implementation that is purposing to achieve an efficient and effective development fairly.[4] Thus, good governance will be achieved when there’s a balanced system between state’s element and societal institution (societal organization, NGO’s, and mass media, etc) in the process of checks and balances, and there’s no one of them who has an absolute control of it.

There are several principles to guide processes in every arena as they have been adopted and practiced in many countries and perceived as very close to the universal values. Good governance has eight major characteristics.[5] They are: participatory, consensus oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, equitable and inclusive and follows the rule of law. It assures that corruption is minimized, the views of minorities are taken into account and that the voices of the most vulnerable in society are heard in decision-making. It is also responsive to the present and future needs of society. Those are some of indicators to measure how good or bad governance in one country.

After the collapse of New Order regime in Indonesia, people who desire democracy and reformation within the government also declare the good governance term. Democracy is greatly related to good governance, as I mentioned above that one of the elements of good governance is participation, which is the basic concept of democracy. Many people say that our country is experiencing multidimensional crises and abuse of power nowadays. The catastrophes of our political system such as corruption, nepotism, and collusion happened massively and even have become part of our cultures. Because of that, our country is being stereotyped as a ‘poor governance’ country. This makes Indonesia becomes untrustworthy to other countries, especially donor countries that help us in development. World Bank as one of our donor institution put the principle of good governance as a requirement for a country which wants to be given a loan. So, like it or not, if we want to get the loan we have to implement good governance to our political system. We have to reduce or even demolish corruption, we have to cut off the bad and long bureaucracy, we have to be more democratic, and also be transparent.

As I mentioned above, Indonesia has a huge problem with corruption’s culture. Many of national institutions are buried deep down on it. But how we deal with it? Corruption has long been a structural, if not a cultural issue, something even schoolchildren accept as a way of life.[6] Corruption give many negative effect to the development program; there is a lack of monetary calculation because of the mark up of high cost products which uncompetitive in global market (high cost economy), and also devastating the societal order. But Indonesia is assumed to have achieved a lot of progress in terms of governance reform. We can put KPK (Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi) as a good example to reflect it. Even though there’s still a lot of corruptor in this country and the process has been such awful that the real output of the governance reform process is unobservable. But with this institution we can reduce it slowly but sure.

Conclusion

The collapse of former president Soeharto and the rise of the democracy movement gave people optimism that corruption would be dealt with seriously, especially through the empowerment of the legislature. But like an advanced cancer, corruption has already broadened to all the legal organs. It should be clear that good governance is an ideal which is difficult to achieve in its totality.[7] Very few countries and societies especially Indonesia, has come close to achieving good governance in its totality. However, to ensure sustainable human development and facing the challenges, actions must be taken to work towards this ideal with the aim of making it a reality.

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[1] See What is Good Governance?, accessed from http://www.depdagri.go.id/konten.php?nama=GoodGovernance&op=detail_artikel&id=4 on May 9^th 2008 at 00.06 WIB.

[2] See T.A Legawa, Establishing Good Governance: The Experience of Indonesia, accessed from http://www.sdnpbd.org/sdi/issues/governance/governance/tommi%20legowo_Indonesia.pdf on May 8^th 2008 at 23.53 WIB.

[3] See Dr. Prakash Louis, Good Governance: As If People Matter, accessed from http://www.jesuit.ie/ijnd/goodgovernance.pdf on May 9^th 2008 at 00.18 WIB.

[4] See Kompilasi Bahan Diskusi Rutin ‘Good Governance’, accessed from http://www.goodgovernance-bappenas.go.id/informasi.htm on May 8^th 2008 at 23.50 WIB.

[5] See Fauzi Ichsan, SBY and Good Governance in Indonesia, accessed from The Jakarta Post, April 5^th 2005 edition.

[6] Ibid.

[7] See http://www.unescap.org/pdd/prs/ProjectActivities/Ongoing/gg/governance.asp , accessed on May 9^th 2008 at 00.43 WIB.