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How
sacred is the unitary state of RI?
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The
Jakarta Post June
5, 2003
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How sacred is the unitary state
of RI?
Opinion and Editorial - June 05,
2003
J. Soedjati Djiwandono,
Political Analyst, Jakarta
Just a little over a year after the
proclamation of Indonesian independence, Prime Minister Sutan
Syahrir signed the Linggardjati agreement with the Dutch on Nov.
15, 1946. Article (1) of the agreement says, "The Netherlands
Government recognizes the Republic as the de facto authority in
Java and Sumatra." Article (2) of the agreement says, inter
alia, that "The Netherlands Government and Republican
Governments co-operate toward the setting up of a sovereign
democratic federal state, the United States of Indonesia..."
That was an initial part of Sutan
Syahrir's brilliant diplomatic efforts to gain international
recognition for Indonesian independence.
Under the circumstances, he had no
choice but to agree to what, at that moment, was thought to be the
most we could get. It almost cost his prime ministership but for
Sukarno's and Mohammad Hatta's full backing of his policy.
Surely the Linggardjati agreement
was never meant to be something final.
Nor was the "final"
agreement reached at the Round Table Conference in The Hague near
the end of 1949, which led to the transfer of sovereignty from the
Dutch to the new United Republic of Indonesia, envisaged by the
Linggardjati agreement.
Barely a year later, the federal
republic was dissolved and replaced by the unitary republic of
Indonesia that has lasted to the present.
The (new) unitary republic that had
substituted the federation was based on a provisional
constitution. Hence the significance of the general election of
1955 for a new parliament and a constitutional assembly to
determine a new constitution. This is important to remember.
The assembly was not to confirm the
1945 Constitution, which was itself a provisional one. Therefore,
before amendments in the present "era of reform", it
contained provisional and supplementary provisions. Article (2),
of the latter, provided that "Within six months after the
People's Consultative Assembly has been formed, the People's
Consultative Assembly shall convene to enact the
Constitution."
That was never done, even after the
Constitutional Assembly was dissolved by then President Sukarno's
decree of July 5, 1959 for its failure to enact a new
constitution. The decree not only dissolved the Constitutional
Assembly and newly elected Parliament, but it also decreed the
return to the 1945 Constitution -- still a provisional
constitution.
Under the prevailing circumstances
in Indonesia near the end of the 1950s, Sukarno's action to
declare a return to the 1945 Constitution, including a unitary
state, was presumably justified. It was an emergency situation.
The point is that the unitary state on the basis of the
provisional constitution of 1950 -- as clear from the term
"provisional" -- was ever meant to be final. Nor was the
("new") unitary state on the basis of the 1945
Constitution, the return to which was decreed by Sukarno. And as
was indicated earlier, the 1945 Constitution was also a
provisional one.
Here lies a mystery of Soeharto's
New Order. From the very beginning, the New Order based its
legitimacy on its "total correction" to Sukarno's
deviations from the 1945 Constitution. Ironically, it continued to
claim the 1945 Constitution as its basis, a constitution decreed
by President Sukarno, which was never confirmed by a series of
People's Consultative Assemblies of Soeharto's own creation over
three decades, and which the New Order claimed to adhere
"purely and consistently", again despite the fact that
it was a provisional constitution.
Is this also to be a final
constitution? Did not our founding fathers argue long before
independence on what should constitute the boundaries of an
independent Indonesia? Did not Sukarno and Hatta differ on whether
or not West Irian should be part of independent Indonesia?
Did our founding fathers also
envisage the integration of East Timor, which the Indonesian
governments since Soeharto used to affirm that the integration of
East Timor was final and therefore as a domestic affair of ours
not negotiable?
This analysis is not meant to be
against a unitary state as such, and neither for nor against a
federal state. As a matter of principle, however, it is against,
and strongly so, the imposition of anything by the central
government on the people, against the wishes of the people, backed
by lies and false arguments, at the expense of justice.
After all, the nation-state is
never an end in itself. And demands for justice should not be
overlooked amid the obsession to defend the unitary state at all
costs.
In his speech on Aug. 17, 1950
broadcast on radio, the precise date the Unitary Republic of
Indonesia was re-established, Prime Minister Mohammad Hatta said,
"the unitary state is not a magic key to open the gate to a
better welfare. It is merely a means to facilitate combined
efforts, to pave the way for improved welfare."
He also said he did not "call
traitors those who from the outset have striven for Indonesian
independence, but have chosen a different path. In their view,
that path was the best to attain an independent Indonesia."
President Sukarno often referred to
Ernest Renan's concept of nationhood. But Renan's idea was simply
a speculative, metaphysical and intellectual construct rather than
a theory based on empirical evidence to explain or to understand
the phenomenon of nationhood.
As far as Indonesia is concerned,
it seems arguable if the nation of Indonesia was promoted, in line
with Renan's conceptualization, as "a soul, spiritual
principle", or "a great solidarity, created by the
sentiment of the sacrifices which have been made of those which
one is disposed to make in the future. It presupposes a past; but
it resumes itself in the present by a tangible fact: the consent,
the clearly expressed desire to continue life in common".
The fact, however, is that for a
period of over a century, intermittent but isolated revolts by
different regions of the then Netherlands East Indies against
Dutch colonial rule were never successful.
Perhaps this bitter experience
finally made Indonesia leaders of the time realize that only a
united and concerted struggle by all the peoples throughout the
territory would be able to oust the colonial ruler. Hence the
growth of an awareness of the need for a new all-embracing and
all-inclusive nation. The Indonesian nation was thus born
primarily out of a pragmatic, practical consideration. Sukarno's
recourse to Ernest Renan seems to have been an effort to justify
that need and to give it a rational and intellectual foundation.
Indeed, Indonesia as a nation was
at the beginning fostered in the face of a common enemy: Dutch
colonial rule that had created injustice. It was glued together by
a common cause: the demand for justice, and thus the demand for
independence as a means to that end. Other things being equal,
injustice under one's own government is worse than under foreign
rule, especially now that justice has been truly and miserably
lacking.
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