As long as communism is taken as a threat,
democracy is flawed
Ririn Sefsani and Timo Duile ; Ririn Sefsani works for
the Partnership for Government
Reform (Kemitraan) Jakarta and
cofounder of the Mombine
Political School for Women in Palu, Sulawesi;
Timo Duile is a post-doctorate
and lecturer
at the School of Southeast Asian
Studies at Bonn University, Germany
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JAKARTA
POST, 12 Desember 2015
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A specter is haunting Indonesia,
the specter of communism. All the powers of the political establishment have
entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Muslim and Christian
clerics, politicians and bureaucrats, the military and vigilante rackets.
Karl Marxs famous first sentences
of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, written in 1848, precisely depict
Indonesia’s current situation. But, in sharp contrast to Europe in the
mid-19th century, there is no leftist party worthy of mention in Indonesia.
Communism in Indonesia is a mere specter indeed.
Fifty years after the bloody
extermination of the Communist Party, the very term of communism is still an
effective tool to exclude from public debates those that are perceived as a
threat by the ruling elite. This tool can be applied to virtually all leftist
movements opposing the established political and economic order.
The political elite can count on
various groups whom, despite not knowing what communism actually is, remain
willing to oppose this ideology as it has been depicted as a threat not
solely to the elite, but to the nation in general. It is doubtful whether
members of the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) or the Anticommunist Front are
able to explain how Marxist economic thought explains economic exploitation,
what surplus value is, what the concept of the working class is about.
Communism, to those people, is
without any precise content and is merely something that should be feared. It
is exactly this perception of communism which makes large parts of society
mentally captivated by Cold War doctrines. Approximately 32 years of indoctrination
by an anticommunist regime continues to show its effect and it could be that
this consciousness is one of the biggest obstacles for both reconciliation
and democratization.
Before the International People’s
Tribunal was held in The Hague recently, the School of Southeast Asian
Studies at Bonn University, Germany, conducted a workshop on the 1965
incidents and on the question of how to deal with that bloody past. The event
was attended a crowd of Indonesian citizens, by lawyers, journalists and
survivors.
Participants were able to discuss
sensitive topics with the Indonesian deputy ambassador in Germany. The deputy
ambassador listened to what the victims had to say. In contrast, the
reactions coming from the administration of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo
and Vice President Jusuf Kalla leave much to be desired since they are not
willing to pay any attention to those victims proving testimony to the
cruelty they experienced.
The decision of Balinese
authorities at the Ubud Writer’s Festival and even by universities to ban the
screening of Joshua Oppenheimer’s films on the 1965-issue is also a clear
sign that the fostered fear of communism is still a reason to restrict the
freedom of expression.
It is this mixture of ignoring
those stigmatized people who suffered painful experiences on behalf of a
harmonious, conflict-free society and the ignorance of what communism
actually is that makes it so hard for Indonesia to deal adequately with its
past.
However, while these attitudes
linger on, Indonesia will not succeed its transition towards democracy
because of two reasons; firstly, because this attitude clearly highlights a
gesture of suppressing points of view considered cumbersome for the elite and
for those many citizens with minds still rooted in New
Order ideology.
Furthermore, the attitude of fear
toward the confused thread named communism prevents Indonesia’s political
culture from becoming democratic as it hampers socialist or labor parties from
the political stage. As long as that is the case, voters in Indonesia will
not have real alternatives in elections because the established parties do
not differ fundamentally in their ideologies.
All parties are more or less bound
to fuzzy nationalist and Islamic notions and are pragmatic and usually
pro-capital in their political operations.
The fostered fear of communism is
still a reason to restrict the freedom of expression.
However, democracy needs
alternatives and the most urgently needed one continues to remain as a
specter of fear in Indonesia; a leftist alternative to pro-capitalist
realpolitik with blurry nationalist notion.
For as long as Indonesia is
unready to face the truth about the actual idea of communism, violation of
human rights such as freedom of speech and the stigmatization of the victims
of 1965 will persist. In contrast to his opponent Prabowo Subianto, Jokowi
highlighted his commitment to implement human rights during his campaign.
In alliance with parties
supporting him, he also stressed in his Nawacita program that he would
“create space for dialogue between citizens”. It is obvious that he will fail
to do so if the government keeps on demonizing communism and those victims of
the anti-communist massacres. The International People’s Tribunal was an
excellent opportunity for the President to provide proof of the promises made
during the election campaign.
But instead of “creating space for
dialogue between citizens”, Kalla reduced the incidents of 1965 to the issue
of the six murdered generals and did not even mention the hundreds of
thousands of victims.
Also, Attorney General Muhammad
Prasetyo called the tribunal “irrelevant” and said Indonesia doesn’t need
intervention from other countries, indirectly blaming the Dutch government
which had nothing to do with the tribunal. The organizers, in contrast,
stressed that they would have conducted the tribunal in Jakarta, but as many
victims did not felt safe in Indonesia, they decided to perform it at The
Hague, the city of international law.
Given that facts, the government
effectively limited the space for dialogue between citizens because they are
still not able to leave New Order narratives behind.
Until today, Marxist works are
officially banned in Indonesia — works that represent the foundations of
major political parties in many well-established democracies all over the
world. Social democracy, socialism, labor parties and left-wing green parties
are all based on Marxist political thoughts.
Through leftist parties, Marxist
thoughts enrich democratic pluralism and provide political identities that
are not solely based on religion and nationalism. Indonesia, with its immense
workforce of laborers, peasants and urban poor, needs a political ideology
that can represent and articulate these people’s economic demands.
Institutional reforms alone do not
make a democracy work; for as long as conflicting ideological alternatives
have yet to be established and socialism is excluded from Indonesian
politics, Indonesia’s democracy is flawed.
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