Democracy, Our Memory
Published by the Jakarta Post: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/06/22/democracy-our-memory.html
One of the founding fathers of the US, Thomas Jefferson, wrote: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Such tyrants, Jefferson argues, must be constantly warned that the people are capable of resisting them. What Jefferson doubts, however, is whether the people will choose to resist the tyrants or remain quiet and lethargic.
Jefferson’s statement rings true to any democracy in the world. Democracy is not a static state. There is never a guarantee that a democracy today will be a democracy tomorrow. They die, perhaps more than authoritarian regimes do, and democratic progresses get rolled back all the time everywhere in the world.
Being a democracy means a country has to constantly choose between progressing and regressing. Even old democracies like the US and European countries have experienced this. After half a million casualties in the 1861-1865 Civil War to end slavery, the US had to face the fact that slavery was back in a new form: Southern racism. After the people forgot and politicians ceased to care, African-Americans were second-class citizens for almost a century.
The story of Europe is the same. Torn apart by World War II, Western Europe transformed itself into a bastion of democracy and human rights. However, the recent European elections saw the rise of far-right groups sympathetic to ultra-nationalist ideas. Sluggish economic growth and the decaying memory of the catastrophe ultra-nationalism once brought have contributed to voters embracing the stability these groups seem to offer.
Since no democracy is immune to these choices, it means Indonesia, too, will have to face the test. The upcoming presidential election on July 9 is probably it. We are asked to choose between two men, each with strengths and weaknesses and records of fulfilled and broken promises.
But this election is more than about these two men; it is about where we want to sail our democracy ship. The choices could not be more different. Prabowo Subianto traces his roots to Soeharto’s regime. He rose under the president’s wing and sunk with it. He represents, and indeed promises, the stability, security and strongman democracy the Soeharto regime once delivered. Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, on the other hand, was no one before the media started to publish his successful terms as mayor of Surakarta. He offers a break from the past.
Both candidates offer promises and there is no right or wrong in voting for either of them. It just depends on where we want our country to go. Do we want our democracy to embrace security and stability, or do we want it to sail to uncharted water, start a new era and distance ourselves from the past as far as possible?
A new leader always brings uncertainties, whereas the past always has its charm. Indeed, at times people do choose stability over the uncertainty of moving forward. European voters do that. That is why the far-right groups gain ground. American voters did that, too, when they were persuaded by George Bush’s war on terror.
It is nonetheless wise to remember that stability is a strange bedfellow of democracy. For every piece of stability we get, we lose some of our freedoms, as inherent in freedom is dissent and, in dissent, some instability.
The choice is in the hands of the people. Once in a while, people will forget that democracy cannot be taken for granted. And when we forget strongmen emerge offering protection and certainty. The promise is sweet and the people may take it.
Democracy, unlike dictatorship, allows the people to go astray, seeking false security in uncertain times. But as our own founding father Muhammad Hatta wrote: “Democracy may be suppressed because of its own fault. But after having suffered a bitter ordeal, it will reawake in conviction.”
This election is a test of how well we remember that our democracy is new and expensive was the price we paid to win it from a strongman. It can only thrive insofar we remember that it is not given.
A democracy is only as strong as its people’s refusal to follow the rose-colored seduction of a bygone time. Our democracy depends on our memory.(*)
Image credit: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/bureaucracy-maze.jpg
