Democracy, Corruption, and Law Enforcement: Challenges in Achieving Grand Indonesia 2045

INDEPENDENCE AND GOLDEN INDONESIA

One of the founding fathers and proclaimer of the Republic of Indonesia Soekarno said that independence was the ‘golden bridge’ for building a just and prosperous Indonesia. The idea was realised through the long struggle and fight that finally brought Indonesia to its independence on 17 August 1945. The proclamation of independence was co-signed by him and Mohammad Hatta. The idea of Indonesia’s future after the independence was expressed in Paragraph-2 of the Preamble of 1945 Constitution which reads,

“And Indonesia’s struggle of movement has come to the heartening, firm, and safe moment of leading the people of Indonesia to the gate of the freedom of an independent, united, sovereign, just, and prosperous state of Indonesia.”

Today, the new generation of Indonesians aspires and has a vision of a Golden, or Grand Indonesia 2045. That vision is about an Indonesia that embodies the characteristics described above, particularly just and prosperous. Based on the estimations of the current government, there is a confidence that the vision can be achieved by 2045, when the country celebrates its 100^th anniversary, a century after its proclamation of independence. To realise the vision, the government has set up its development strategies based on the four pillars of development:

1. Human development and the mastery of science and technology;
2. Sustainable economic growth;
3. Equality of development; and
4. National resilience and governance.

The question is: could this vision – Grand/Golden Indonesia 2045 – really be achieved? Some ‘scientific’ calculations were indeed provided by international consultancy firms (such as McKinsey and PriceWaterhouseCoopers), and were cited by the Government, and did give them a certain degree of confidence. However, it is not just about striving for prerequisites such as making sure the country achieves linear economic growth, but there are other aspects – non-economic ones – that need to be taken into account.

Let me briefly tend to them. First, on democracy and law.

DEMOCRACY AND LAW

Right from the beginning, when the independence of Indonesia was still ‘in preparation’, the founding fathers of the country unanimously agreed that the main principle in maintaining the country was that it had to be based on a democratic system. The decision to choose democracy as the foundation was not easy. It was achieved through serious debates because there were also those who proposed other systems such as a monarchy. The result of this debate was an agreement reached by voting on 10 July 1945, which was to establish a democracy as the political system and mechanism in our Constitution. (We can understand why the controversy arose because at that time the area of what then made up Indonesia consisted of no less than 77 kingdoms, each with its own territory and its own people. The historic debate ended with a vote: those voted for a form of democracy, 55 votes; a monarchy, 6 votes; and those who abstained, 1 vote.) Prior to that, at the session where the founding fathers gathered from 29 May to 1 June 1945, there was also a debate about state ideology between the two main groups. The first one wanted a secular democratic state while the second a theocratic state (Islamic State). The results were agreed on 22 June 1945 in what was then known as the Jakarta Charter. On 18 August 1945, this Charter was adapted into the Preamble to the Constitution in which the state ideology – now called Pancasila (Five Principles) – is embedded. The Pancasila ideology reconciled the relationship between a democratic state and a theocratic state, and established Indonesia as a “theo-democratic state” (demokrasi berke-Tuhan-an) or “religious nation state” (negara-kebangsaan berke-Tuhan-an), in which belief in one God is enshrined as a core principle.

Pancasila ensures that everyone in Indonesia is fully protected in terms of exercising their rights, be they religious, or political. Pancasila is kalimatun sawa or modus vivendi, sacred agreement – a similarity of view about different views: a melting pot of different ideologies which characterises the nation of Indonesia.

The Indonesia’s founding fathers also very carefully affirmed the existence of the principle of the rule of law (nomocracy) in the constitution. They emphasised that the state should have a single, free and independent judicative power. The supreme judiciary of the Supreme Court is the highest authority to judge disputes or legal conflicts among citizens, between citizens and private legal bodies, between citizens as well as private legal entities and government officials and institutions. Because of the importance of the rule of law in Indonesia, since the reformasi in 1998, the implementation of 1945 Constitution has been strengthened through the addition of two state institutions bearing judiciary power, i.e. the Constitutional Court and the Judicial Commission.

The Constitutional Court deals with conflicts of regulations for the enactment of laws against the constitution as well as other authorities in state conflicts such as disputes of election results, disputes between state institutions whose functions are mentioned in the constitution, dissolutions of political parties, and the resignation of the President and/or Vice-President who were elected to office. As for the Judicial Commission, it is authorised to select and nominate candidates for supreme judges and oversee judges’ conduct in ethics and professionalism. The Judicial Commission is a state institution equal to the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court, but it is not a body of the judiciary, but a body with functions relating to the authority of the judicial authority (that is, auxiliary institutions).

That Indonesia has, since its inception, embraced the principles and systems of democracy and the rule of law shows that both are equally important and must reinforce each other. As a democracy, the government sources from the people, is run by the people, and is for the people. The Indonesian people is the main ‘shareholder’ – with democracy providing the mechanism for checks and balances. Democracy must strengthen and be based on the law whilst the law must reinforce and be founded on democracy. An adagium very often used in discourse about politics and law in Indonesia is, “Democracy without law is savage and anarchist, law without democracy is despotic and arbitrary”.

Now let me turn to the second aspect: corruption.

CORRUPTION IN INDONESIA

We cannot deny the very fact that corruption in Indonesia has become cancerous and acute. No matter how hard the government has tried to hide and deny it, thanks to massive information exchange made possible by the advancement of technology, international communities are aware of the rampant corruption and state of the law enforcement in the country. Although corruption does not happen only in Indonesia, its current state in the country is dire. International institutions such as Transparency International Indonesia (TII) have worked on the ranking of corruption of countries in the world. In the corruption perceptions index (CPI), Indonesia in the last three years has fallen to a score of 34 after previously achieving the highest score of 38. This represents a worsening state of corruption in the country.

Corruption in Indonesia manifests in various institutions and state officials: legislative, executive, and judicial. Corruption is often committed by officials who collude with corporations to exploit natural resources or by marking up, or down, state finances. In the bureaucracy, there is either a project sale or a case sale. Sometimes, even there are cases where ministers work well but their bureaucracies grow out of control in terms of corruption. In corporate management, entrepreneurs are sometimes faced with dilemmas: if you work according to the procedures, it is hard to secure profitable projects; but if you pay the officials to make things easy for you, you will be charged of bribery.

We might still remember the era of the New Order administration under Suharto. The regime fell after being in power for about 32 years (1966-1998) because of the spread of corruption, collusion, and nepotism. Such a corrupt administration was unable to withstand the wave of monetary crisis that hit many Asian countries (1997-1998) for it weakened the fundamentals of the country.

Democracy is murdered through democratic processes. Corruption, collusion, and nepotism are constructed through the formulation of rules that are formally democratic but actually collusive-oligarchic.

CORRUPTION IN THE REFORMASI ERA

The 1998 Reformasi (Reform) gave hope for the emergence of a government clean from corruption, collusion, and nepotism. And at the beginning it seemed that it was. The government that emerged from the reformasi era created various regulations and institutions to close the loophole for corruption, collusion, and nepotism. At first it succeeded, at least until the end of the second period of political and law reforms. The first democratic election (1999) were successful; state institutions were established and revamped. It can be said that during the first two periods (ten years) there was no major corruption in Indonesia. The law mafia was beginning to recede, legislative institutions became more productive and professional. But nearing the 2009 election, the money-politics issue began to emerge when direct, open elections both at the national and local government levels were introduced. That marked the beginning of the political life that then became transactional, massive corruption began to re-emerge – at the scale from billions, hundreds of billions, to trillions, and even hundreds of trillion rupiahs.

Some scholars and commentators argue that the consolidation of democracy has given rise to transactional democracies. In my view, what happened after the end of the second period is the emergence of oligarchy. Indonesia is not a democracy anymore. Formally, or officially, it is indeed still a democracy, a procedural one. But the substance is oligarchy, which Dahl would call polyarchy. Democracy is murdered through democratic processes. Corruption, collusion, and nepotism are constructed through the formulation of rules that are formally democratic but actually collusive-oligarchic.

Having discussed corruption as the first aspect, let me now turn to the second aspect.

LAW ENFORCEMENT

Alongside the rise of a procedural democracy that is substantively oligarchic, law enforcement also shows symptoms of regression in Indonesia. Some of the major cases were handled in collusive fashion by the law enforcer (whether the police or attorney-general). A great deal of big cases is not handled properly due to the involvement of law enforcement bodies either through blackmail, bribery, extortion, among others. However, I have to be fair that the handling of mild cases as well as common criminal cases especially outside the big cities is going pretty well. There are thousands of cases in Indonesia which has no less than 82,395 villages and 7,266 sub districts. Common crimes and minor conflicts can be well handled either by the security apparatus or resolved by heads of village. You can imagine: if all legal cases had to be resolved through legal proceedings in court, it would have been chaotic. In Indonesia, everyday public life especially in countryside is relatively calm as the country has a culture of collectivism (we call it gotong royong) and customs that are at heart are actually what we would term “restorative justice”.

But for the cases involving big business, exploitations of natural resources, political and officials’ family cases, collusion between government officials and ‘black businessmen’ – the law enforcement is still problematic, to say the least. Criminal acts allegedly involving ‘privileged individuals’ often face obstacles to being revealed; large-scale corruptions were dismissed through collusion.

The old saying is true: “Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Whoever succeeds in possessing power is always driven to extend and prolong their power. I genuinely believe that (many?) Indonesian leaders have basic leadership qualities: they are democratic, nationalist, people-loving, non-corrupt. But many of them could not escape from the abovementioned old saying. After acquiring power and commencing their post, they usually start well and proper. People would love and even praise them. But as time passes, they enjoy all the privileges of being in a powerful position, and this is accompanied by the weakening of control and discipline. Soon, a bunch of ‘thugs’ would appear and appeal to these leaders to continue being in power to lead – arguing that they have led well so they remain needed and they must extend and expand their power. They will no longer remember that democracy and the constitution prescribe a ‘limitation’ in both the scope of exercise and possession of power. This is what is once again an obstacle that obstructs our democracy and nomocracy.

Democracy is the sovereignty of the people, and nomocracy is the supremacy of law. Both must go hand in hand. As I mentioned the adagium earlier, democracy without the law can lead to chaos, and authoritarianism. On the contrary, the law without democracy can be abused by all-powerful, elite or conservative leaders. And there are real challenges in the course of democracy and nomocracy in Indonesia. For example, there are parties who always attempt to abuse the law; and engage in facilitation payment and abuse of power. Indonesia suffers from the rise of a ‘law industry’, human rights violations, low transparency and accountability – all show that nomocracy has not been in place. Does this mean the regulations are not enough?

As a matter of fact, since reformasi, a number of regulatory frameworks have been made in order to improve the quality of democracy and government. Indonesia is among countries with the highest number of regulations in the world. But this is not about numbers but whether they are implemented properly and efficiently. In the country we have legal substance and the legal structure; what is still needed is the legal culture. Should those regulations be properly implemented especially among government officials, there would be no more cases of corruption, facilitation payment, abuse of power, collusion and nepotism.

…although Indonesia has laid the foundations of democracy and law in its statecraft and governance, the country keeps stumbling upon obstacles to substantial democratic and legal development. Should this trend continue, the vision of Golden Indonesia 2045 very likely will not be realised or achieved.

When I was the Coordinating Minister for Politics, Law, and Security, I initiated the Law Reform Acceleration Team involving academics, activists, civil society, and the media. The team’s scope of works included justice reform, corruption prevention and eradication, as well as agrarian reform. That was a strategic approach to reform law enforcement and restore public trust. In addition to modernise and make law enforcer more professional, the use of digital technology is instrumental to capture public opinion and even complaints, for example through government’s platform LAPOR.

With such circumstances with our democracy, law enforcement and state of the corruption in Indonesia, how would we achieve the vision of Grand, or Golden Indonesia 2045?

GOLDEN INDONESIA

A modest conclusion here is that, although Indonesia has laid the foundations of democracy and law in its statecraft and governance, the country keeps stumbling upon obstacles to substantial democratic and legal development. Should this trend continue, the vision of Golden Indonesia 2045 very likely will not be realised or achieved. Aspiring to be the top four or five economies in the world, Indonesia envisages a per capita income of close to US$24,000, managed by high quality human resources. However, the country has for more than 30 years since 1993 been unable to escape the middle-income trap. And we only have 21 years left to realise that vision while the country’s political infrastructure and law enforcement remain weak. The same goes with other aspects that also need deliberate improvement: education, health, basic services, among others. Serious measures are hence needed to overcome these obstacles. We need experts from many development fields who are willing to work collaboratively to address them. As someone having a background in politics and constitutional law, I share my personal view that if Indonesia’s politics and laws are left as they are now, then the demographic bonus will not be materialised and on the contrary, it soon will become demographic curse and the vision of Indonesia Emas (Golden Indonesia) 2045 will remain just a dream.

PUTTING HOPE IN PRABOWO

In the recent 2024 presidential election, I did not support Prabowo. I was running against him as the vice presidential candidate of Ganjar Pranowo. But we lost in the elections. I am aware there have been many criticisms and complaints about the quality of the election. However, constitutionally Prabowo-Gibran won. For the sake of our civic manners in upholding the constitution, the victory of Prabowo-Gibran must be accepted. The nation must keep going, not be held or halted by those losing in the elections. That was why when the Constitutional Court ruled that Prabowo-Gibran were the winners in the presidential election, both Ganjar and I immediately declared our acceptance and welcomed Prabowo as the incoming president of the Republic of Indonesia.

We must not lose hope in realising the vision of Grand/Golden Indonesia 2045. From a political and legal point of view, I have hopes that Prabowo would be able to lead Indonesia to realise that vision. And I have two reasons to hope that Prabowo can do that.

First, Prabowo knows and often expresses his views that our fundamental problem is injustice in the government. This confirms that our major problem is democracy, law, and corrupt governmental practices. In 2018, Prabowo once said that if Indonesia remained unchanged, the country would disintegrate in 2030. His statement attracted public attention or complaints, because the phrase “disintegrated by 2030” refers to a techno-thriller novel titled Ghost Fleet by PW Singer and August Cole in 2015. Although many strongly criticised Prabowo’s statement for it was only based on a novel and is not in line with the official position, I could say that his statement is true. If oligarchs run the government, law enforcement is weak, and corruption continues to flourish, Indonesia’s disintegration is not impossible – and can happen anytime. To me, that statement could well indicate Prabowo’s profound concerns about the problems of oligarchy, corruption, and weak law enforcement, which have become nationwide.

Secondly, based on my acquaintance and collegial working relationship with Prabowo directly, I believe Prabowo can be expected to bring about changes and improvements as expressed in that statement. My belief is substantiated not only through his career experience and personal character, but also his background as an Indonesian military officer which demanded he have a strong and disciplined nationalist attitude. Prabowo’s knowledge and experience are vast. He may be sometimes temperamental but he is fair, consistent, and warm. To me, that is a hope that can be hung in the midst of our unavoidable reality.