Experiences in many countries show that citizen councils provide an opportunity to restore public confidence in democracy in the midst of an increase in public distrust of political elites.
By
AZYUMARDI AZRA
·4 minutes read
ABK
Azyumardi Azra
In practice, Indonesian democracy for the last several years can be called liberal democracy with a winner-take-all outcome. The spoils are a large coalition of supporters of the government of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Vice President Ma'ruf Amin. They fully control the political ecosystem of Indonesia.
The practice of winner-take-all democracy is usually related to the presidential election in the United States, where the voters determine winners of the electoral college in each state, which later confirms the results of the presidential election. Even though the difference in the number of votes between the presidential tickets is not big, all electoral college representations are taken by the winners. The practice of winner-take-all politics — whether in the US presidential election or through an absolute majority political coalition — has caused many negative impacts. One of the main things is that the country is ruled by a political oligarchy in alliance with a business oligarchy. Beyond that, many citizens do not have actual and effective representation in the political process that is claimed to be a democracy.
Anand Giridharadas in Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing World (2018) concludes that the politics of winner take all is nothing but a series of efforts by local, national and global oligarchic elites (in politics and business) to maintain the oligarchic status quo. In the name of democracy, the winners of power make those outside them “powerless losers”.
Then what can be done? Democracy as a political system, which in the process of succession involves public participation — with all its weaknesses — anyhow, must be admitted to have fewer disadvantages than absolute monarchy, authoritarianism or theocracy. Therefore, the shortcomings of democracy must be reduced. To prevent the hegemony of power through democratic procedures, an increasing number of experts are talking about deliberative democracy. Deliberative democracy, or every now and then called discursive democracy, is a democracy that makes deliberation a central practice in decision making. Decisions are made through deliberation in order to reach a consensus, while still taking into consideration the majority-minority balance in political representation.
Deliberative democracy has a strong constitutional foundation in the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI). Substantively, deliberative democracy is contained in the fourth principle of Pancasila, "The people are led by wisdom in deliberation/representation." This principle is strongly related to the local wisdom of the Indonesian ethnic groups. In the Minang community, for example, there is a tradition of kursi salapan and pangulu barajo kamupakaik; in the tradition of the people of Lampung there is mekhatin or merwatin; in Javanese society the popular tradition of urun rembug; and in the Yokari tribe in Papua there is an orudia tradition. Even though deliberative democracy has strong constitutional and sociocultural roots in Indonesian society, its development has never been encouraging.
In view of the experience of democracy in Indonesia at present, it is appropriate for the political elites in the trias politica institution and in political parties to try to reorient Indonesian democracy to the deliberative tradition. Otherwise, citizens may increasingly lose faith in liberal democracy, which continues to keep up the winner-take-all praxis.
Claudia Chwalisz, in an article “A New Wave of Deliberative Democracy” in Carnegie Europe on Tuesday (26/11/2019), notes that an increasing number of countries are experimenting with deliberative democracy. Ordinary citizens are increasingly invited to be involved in decision making. For example, residents of Ostbelgien, a German-speaking Belgian community, with a parliamentary mandate, on Monday (25/2/2019) formed a citizen council to complement the parliament. The council of citizens, whose members are chosen at random through a kind of lottery, is in charge of deliberation and consensus on various public issues. They then submit recommendations to the parliament and the government, which are obliged to discuss and take them into consideration.
There are also those who are skeptical about the involvement of ordinary people in the citizen council in deliberation and consensus with the legislature and executive. However, experiences in many countries show that citizen councils provide an opportunity to restore public confidence in democracy in the midst of an increase in public distrust of political elites.
AZYUMARDI AZRA, History professor at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN); member of the Cultural Commission at the Indonesian Academy of Sciences (AIPI).
