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01/25/03
While the old saying goes, "United we are strong," it
seems Indonesians these days embrace another
philosophy, "United we get lost."
Having cooperatively “forced” the mighty Soeharto to
resign – although various external forces also
contributed to his decision to step down -,
Indonesians are now in the brink of losing two of the
most important factors in bringing the nation to a
higher level. The first is vision and the other one is
cooperation.
Vision will determine the ultimate goals that need to
be achieved. It sets values that need to be obeyed and
it keeps the fighting spirit in achieving the goals.
In other words, vision is the goal, the guidance and
the path.
But what kind of vision that Indonesians are almost
losing? It can be answered by another question: What
are the goals that Indonesians want to achieve? The
Constitution clearly says: Prosperity and justice for
all Indonesians. It does not say for a certain
Indonesians, but for all.
The subsequent question is how to define and realize
prosperity and justice for all? The former cannot be
kept abstract as abstractness will impede the efforts
in realizing it. For instance, if prosperity is
defined circularly as prosperity, as what is happening
now, Indonesia will never be able to evaluate herself
whether she makes progress or not.
To be concrete, let’s define that prosperity is the
condition where 90-95% of Indonesians are able to
afford good housing, good access to healthcare and
sanitation and good education. The prosperity of the
remaining 5-10% will be provided by the government.
These are the conditions the nation wants to achieve
in 20-25 years from now. The crucial questions now
are: How to achieve them? What are the plans? What is
the course of direction? How to build our human
resources to perform the goals?
Neither the current government nor non-governmental
organizations are able to produce such vision, to
design plans and to set the direction that needs to be
taken to achieve them. The nation is basically losing
a sense of direction.
Almost five years since Soeharto stepped down the
country is still struggling to walk on her own. The
nation apparently has to keep swallowing foreign debts
and foreign assistances while at the same time is
confused to find her own way to prosper. But sooner or
later, this dismal condition has got to stop. To
solely rely on the lawmakers and the government to
formulate the nation’s direction would be a mistake
given the tendency that those two bodies are seemingly
out of touch of these ideas as the House leader
himself is acting as immune to the law and most
lawmakers and government’s officials still need to
improve their analytical capabilities.
Together with the government, various elements in
society – intellectuals, media people, business people
and etc. - have to sit down and debate matters related
to the future of the nation, from the nation’s goals,
plans to achieve the goals and the direction to
realize them. A simple idea would be to have a
national summit this year on “Nation’s strategy and
direction in realizing a better Indonesia.” And all
has to cooperate for a fundamental reason.
Cooperation is the effective way to realize the
vision. It inherently implies a set of rules in
achieving a particular goal. Some of them are:
Tolerant, hard-working, honest and responsible. Any
cooperation without tolerance will not work since
cooperation demands an acknowledgement of others. The
latter automatically recognizes that people are
different and that diversity is natural.
Since cooperation is directed to achieve goals, it
demands hard-working attitude from individuals joint
in the cooperation. Hard-working individuals are
generally honest people since they usually accept the
fact that they have weaknesses. They are also
responsible people since they value time preciously
and view responsibilities as opportunities to realize
a higher level of achievement. It is no wonder when
British philosopher, Bertrand Russell said, “The only
thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.”
Cooperation also will link one’s idealism to those of
others. It will connect different people emotionally
for the good of all. That’s why Bung Hatta, one of the
foremost founding fathers of the nation, was very
convinced that only by cooperation Indonesia would be
able to achieve her independence and her greatness in
the future.
Even power, when it is viewed objectively, is nothing
but cooperation. When power is exercised without
cooperation, it either becomes repressive and
totalitarian or pathetic and ineffective. When power
is emerged not by cooperation it becomes totalitarian.
The former
US
President, Woodrow Wilson, precisely put this into a
wonderful line, “Power consists in one's capacity to
link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by
reason and a gift of cooperation.”
One may ask, “So, what about MPR – Majelis Permusyarawatan
Rakyat?” It is true that the above issues are
political issues. But as Charles De Gaulle once said,
“…politics are too serious a matter to be left to the
politicians,” those crucial issues need to be debated
and formulated by the whole elements in the society,
not solely by politicians.
And to wait until the 2004 general election is over would be too
late.
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