The dividing question was whether Islam or secular nationalism should be the basis of the new republic of Indonesia. Sukarno received unanimous applause when he proposed that Indonesia be based on five principles he called Pancasila (five principles).
It took lengthy, and sometimes stormy discussions until Pancasila got its definitive form in the preamble of the Constitution which was approved on Aug. 18, 1945 and therefore called the 1945 Constitution: Belief in one God, just and civilized humanism, Unity of Indonesia, People’s power (or relatedness to the people) led by the guidance of wisdom in common deliberation/representation and social justice for the entire Indonesian people.
While foreigners sometimes wonder what was so special about those five principles, Indonesians offer a question whether Pancasila maintains its “ideological” power. But why, on the other hand, has Pancasila since a few years ago been taken up again by Indonesian intellectuals, mainstream Muslim (and other) religious leaders and even politicians.
The return to Pancasila (if that’s the case) must be understood on the background of the growing worry of many Indonesians about the actual situation in the country.
At first sight this seems strange. Although not perfect the country seems to be on a solid path to success. Except for some parts of Papua you can move freely and efficiently around the whole country. Poverty is not up. And in spite of serious acts of terror, security in general is much better here than in many other countries.
But this is only the surface. Competent economists point to serious weaknesses: National economic growth comes almost exclusively from the extraction of natural resources.
There is no significant growth in industrial production, unemployment is consistently high, infrastructure is in a worrying state and almost 50 percent of the population still lives below welfare levels.
And there are two really distressing developments. The first is the all pervasive corruption involving the political elites. There are almost no politicians who do not dirty their hands on. Every month a new scandal surfaces and overshadows the previous scandals.
The popular outcry against the planned construction of 28-story building for the House members, originally projected to cost US$188 million, arose from the justified suspicion that the 560 politicians would get a significant cut from the project. It is widely known that politicians who sponsor a project in a region receive kickbacks between 7 and 13 percent. No legislation will be endorsed without the politicians being paid extra money.
Corruption is now worse than the situation under Soeharto. This means nothing else than that reformasi, the reform movement that forced Soeharto to step down, has failed to live up to eradicate corruption, collusion and nepotism (KKN) as expected. It also means that our state is losing its moral dignity.
It is clear that this situation gravely endangers the fruits of reform: democracy and human rights. When people perceive democracy as nothing more than a project of the political elites who reap the most out of it, democracy will be over. What would follow then is every body’s guess.
At the same time, since reformasi gave us all democratic freedoms, a new hardline, extreme and exclusive religiosity is steadily infiltrating the minds and hearts especially of young students and intellectuals.
This mostly Middle East inspired religiosity pretends to offer a clear-cut, morally respectable alternative to the general trend to Western consumerism, hedonism and corruption. It means that values like “the nation” or Pancasila are left behind.
This new hardline religiosity goes together with an open contempt for religious tolerance and a growing readiness to use violence in the name of religion. At the same time the state seems to have lost the courage to enforce its constitutional duty to give zero tolerance to violence.
It is heartening to observe that mainstream religious leaders are now alerted of this danger. In this connection they bring Pancasila back into the national discourse.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe once wrote about the “two souls living in my breast”. The one is the part of the heart illuminated by a deep attraction to the good, the other is a devilish abyss where evil lurks in the dark.
The same might be true for the soul of a people. Indonesians now feel as if the spell of darkness is descending on our country and the devils arise in the forms of intolerance, hatred, bloodthirstiness (imagine preachers calling on their community to “kill, kill, kill” in the name of God!), as well as greed, irresponsibility, egoistic desires and corrupt mind.
It is on the heels of the awareness of the crucial importance of Pancasila arises. Pancasila expresses the shining noble part of Indonesia’s soul. It paints Indonesia as Indonesians dream how she should be, the ideal Indonesia Indonesians would be proud of, as expressed in Pancasila’s beautiful five principles.
But Pancasila is more than that. Indonesians recount Aug. 18, 1945, the day when Pancasila was inaugurated, as one of Indonesia’s most shining hours, the day when Indonesians, for the sake of national unity, committed themselves to accepting each other in their respective religious, cultural, ethnic and racial identity.
What happened? On the morning of Aug. 18, 1945 the constitutional assembly (PPKI) agreed unanimously to drop an addition to the first principle of Pancasila (belief in God), i. e. that Muslims were obliged to live according to the sharia They recognized that naming one religion in the most basic philosophy of the state would make full identification of the others impossible.
Thus for the sake of national unity even the formal representatives of Islam agreed not to push for that point. As a consequence Indonesia endorsed the 1945 Constitution where the majority religion (Islam) does not get any special treatment. Many say that only the willingness of the Muslim majority not to insist on special privileges has made unity of all those different people between Aceh and Papua possible.
Thus Pancasila embodies the finest hour in the formation of the Indonesian nation. It is the documentation of the fact that Indonesians, at a decisive moment in their history, were able to overcome their respective narrow, sectarian and particular interests and prejudices in order to build one nation, united by the ideals of Pancasila, in quest for a “free, united, sovereign, just and prosperous” nation.
Now that Indonesians of different backgrounds try hard to re-actualize Pancasila, they want to bring Indonesia back to her most shining idealism.
Franz Magnis-Suseno opinion's
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