Both Jokowi and Prabowo would need to overhaul the laws and mindsets that have so far blocked our contrasting legacy of reformasi — major progress toward being a more humane nation.
Source/Credit: The Jakarta Post / Opinion
By Ati Nurbaiti | July 3, 2014
A soldier allegedly set a parking attendant on fire on June 24, reportedly as the latter refused to hand him payment of Rp 50,000 or US$4. First Pvt. Heri will be tried at a military tribunal. Earlier this year, three military officers extorted a man caught for gambling. Extortion is still common among civilians, police and soldiers, and at least the law is being enforced.
But like civilians, it’s the low level criminals in the military and police that are immediately vilified for crimes. When it is the elites, like the 11 members of the Army’s Special Forces (Kopassus) charged with murdering four alleged hoodlums in police detention in Sleman, Yogyakarta, last year, the top brass and loud demonstrators rallied around them even as they marched to the tribunal, hailing them as heroes for defending the esprit de corps of Kopassus and of the military.
It is this glorification of sick heroism that is alive and well in a “democratic” Indonesia. Claims of defending the spirit of the corps extend well beyond the military, manifested too often as “us against them” in religious identity, for instance, or the old “right or wrong my country”.
Defending one’s corps, community and country is indeed heroic; it is sick when it gets hard to distinguish from bullying and senseless violence. Time and again we have witnessed the use of brute force without care for rules and taking the law into one’s own hands, in the confidence that perpetrators would be regarded as heroes doing the right thing to protect everyone. Maybe our penchant for all these action flicks is partly to blame.
We cannot rely on a single leader to cure all our ills. But a new president issuing clear signals of the do’s and don’ts of living in a lawful country would go a long way to discourage condoning murder in the name of noble pretexts.
The closing of an Ahmadiyah mosque just before Ramadhan in West Java is a similar sick reflection of righteousness, a tyranny of the majority. But the defenders of Islam in the Ciamis regency would not only feel heroic — they had lots of legal ground behind this latest assault on a minority faith.
This includes the 2011 West Javanese ban on the Ahmadiyah, the 1960 law on blasphemy, the inter-ministry restrictions on the Ahmadiyah, and bylaws on similar minorities in many localities. The government has said these bylaws are still within the authority of regional autonomy, either for public order or in establishing a region’s particular cultural identity. West Java’s neighbor, Banten, issued a similar provincial ban on the Ahmadiyah, following a murderous attack on them in early 2011.
It is the prospect of increased state-sponsored bullying — intimidation and violence with justifications based on law and beliefs encouraged and endorsed by authorities — that is behind the fears of having Prabowo Subianto as president, precisely because he is seen by many as being “strong and firm” as a brilliant former commander of the special forces, his tainted human rights record being a heroic plus to his supporters.
Meanwhile it is the perception of a less-confident “president Jokowi” that turns off some who are not enthusiastic about another doubtful leader, as critics label the incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. While Yudhoyono has been toasted around the globe as the leader of a predominantly Muslim Asian democracy, he will also be remembered for his timidity against hardliners, emboldening the revival of the brutes seeking dominance in the name of God or country.
Both Jokowi and Prabowo would need to overhaul the laws and mindsets that have so far blocked our contrasting legacy of reformasi — major progress toward being a more humane nation.
Here lies the central test of Indonesia’s new “firm” president — can he put his foot down on policies that violate the spirit of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of worship, for instance?
Can he encourage a military trying to prove commitment to professionalism to their supreme commander? This would happen if the top brass could curb wayward officers acting a bit too enthusiastically to protect citizens or defend their corps.
And this in turn would take place if the supreme commander understands the new values of post-Soeharto Indonesia. No future commander would, for instance, need to take the trouble of snatching “subversive” activists off the street, as Prabowo said he did under orders from his “superior” (no one can confirm this with then-military commander Feisal Tanjung and supreme commander Soeharto, who are both dead).
Steady steps to uphold values based on humanity and democracy would leave little room for misled heroism. Prabowo argues for a style of human rights particular to local customs and faiths. But our new president would have to go forward with global recognition that basic human rights are universal. No discrimination means no discrimination toward any citizen, even if Islamic leaders have said the Shiite and Ahmadiyah teachings are haram (forbidden according to Islam). A reading of Jokowi’s vision and mission statement, at least, is much more consistent with the spirit of reformasi.
A firm president reading our amended Constitution on freedom of worship would not be confused — even as Islamic intolerant groups cite the same clause, that the freedom should not disturb the worship of others. So Prabowo, if elected, would have to drop his Gerindra Party’s manifesto on the state obligation to ensure “religious purity”.
For the new president should not tolerate the opportunistic local leaders fishing for votes through moralistic bylaws seeking to restrict the “impure” faiths. Such firmness would not fear losing the “Islamic vote”, as suggested by Yudhoyono’s administration.
This is the kind of firmness we need from Indonesia’s seventh president, at least to avoid regressing right back to the old days.
That was when premanisme, the practice and habit of bullying involving subordinates, groups and gangsters encouraged by state or private institutions, whipped up to defend the honor of anything — with adequate incentives — was pervasive, as it was highly convenient to use in battles from parking turf to territories.
We have yet to overcome premanisme within schools, communities and in political and business life. Therefore we need a leader to boost efforts in the long fight against one of our chronic sources of violence.
The author is a staff writer at The Jakarta Post.
Read original post here: Indonesia: Hopes for a firm new president
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