Democracy After 11 Years

* All we need now is anti democracy movement

Democracy, as a system of government, needs evaluation and critics. After 11-year-implementation in Indonesia, it is the time to evaluate the result.

Based on our history, the time for system evaluation is appropriate. In 1978 after President Soeharto had reigned for 11 years, the ITB' students hold demonstration to reject the re-election of Pak Harto. The students protested Pak Harto's dictatorship. They believe that the democracy system is the best way to obtain the people's welfare.

After 20 years, the students succeeded to topple down Pak Harto. Suddenly all Pak Harto's work and achievement is neglected. This nation sees no relationship between strong government – not just dictatorship – and the country's achievement. The firm stand and action of Pak Harto on democracy has been the reason not to acknowledge Pak Harto's merit.

Since then, the nation began to conduct experiment on democracy. All democracy attributes such as the freedom to establish parties, the freedom to speak are bloomed nationwide. The politics becomes hectic and crowded everywhere. Money and energy rather goes to politics than to economy development.

Now politics – not economy - is the king. The lawmakers become the most powerful in politics. The president is no longer the only power to decide the development policy. At present the president's cabinets have to overcome the lawmakers' interest. The government's capacity is paralyzed. This is one of critical issues which can explain that democracy is not the guarantee for the development success.

The government itself has limited good human resources to develop this country. Meanwhile the parties cannot establish a system to produce high quality lawmakers. This situation brings the interaction between government and law makers not effective.

The executives recruitment is ruined by corruption, collusion and nepotism. Meritocracy is not the only way to select high level officers. Even without the disturbance of lawmakers, the executives still have many problems in implementing policies.

The lawmakers recruitment is worse. Anybody can be a lawmaker, whether he/she is qualified or not, as long as he/she can get the most votes. The capacity or the past achievement is not considered at all.

The doctoral theses of Idrus Marham, the lawmaker of Golkar Party, reveals that more than 60% of lawmakers is not qualified. There is no conceptual debates in legislative process. Negotiations and political intrigues replace them. This is the inside story of lawmakers.

And this is not the only critical case in developing the country based on democracy system. The other cases are the effectiveness and role of senators, the role of governor in district autonomy area and so on. Can we overcome all problems by democracy system to achieve the goal of people's welfare and justice?

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The strong government of Pak Harto began to be widely criticized after 11 years since he grabbed the power. However the democracy system is never criticized after 11 year implementation. The democracy system cannot be proven as the best way to develop this nation.

Compared with critics to Pak Harto's dictatorship, there is no underground movement, there is no students' demonstration to democracy system failure. It seems that democracy is the magic thing from sky which is a taboo to be questioned.

Certainly it is impossible to go back to the past. The history has brought us to democracy system. And the show must go on. However we can learn from the principle of strong government. The democracy practice must be corrected. The urgent things are (i) president must have the strongest power, not the lawmakers, (ii) the number of political parties must be limited, and (iii) the regional autonomy policy must be improved.

In democracy system all of these corrective actions are handled both executive and legislative. However the quality of lawmakers will be the high hurdle to solve the problems.

The correction of our democracy system cannot depend on merely internal process. So the existence of anti democracy movement is urgently needed. It can be from inside or outside legislative and executive institutions.

The paradox is anti democracy movement can lead the democracy to the right way.

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