Political Parties Responsible for Alleviating Friction

KOMPAS/HERU SRI KUMORO

Participants of the Rajut Kejut march carry a knitted banner that reads "Knitting Diversity" during the 21 April 2019 Car Free Day on Jl. Sudirman, Jakarta. The march urged all citizens to reunite following the divisive 2019 elections.

YOGYAKARTA, KOMPAS — Social friction threatens not only democracy, but also national unity. Political parties and the elite are responsible for resolving this friction, one way of which is to provide political education. Social friction is often caused by political contestation at the elite level.Regarding the issue, former Muhammadiyah chair Ahmad Syafii Maarif said in Yogyakarta on Tuesday (30/7/2019) that Indonesia’s political parties should not think only about themselves, and they must also think about the interests of the nation-state for the future.

Separately, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) researcher Syamsuddin Haris said that differences in opinion were inevitable in a democracy. However, these differences became unhealthy if they gave rise to social friction. “Stakeholders, especially political parties, are the most responsible [for resolving social friction] by providing political education, as they are the ones competing,” he said.

Indications of social friction were evident in the 2018 Indonesian Democracy Index (IDI) released on Monday. Despite an overall increase from 72.11 in 2017 to 72.39 in 2018, two out of the three aspects assessed showed a decline. The declines occurred in civil freedoms and individual political rights. The other aspect, democratic institutions, saw an increase.

The lower score in civil freedoms was linked to the use of threats or violence in society to curtail the freedoms of assembly, association and speech. This condition is believed to have stemmed from the excessive political contestation during the 2019 elections, which was riddled hoaxes, among other things (Kompas, 30/7/2019).

Political contests like elections, Haris said, should ideally serve as a national platform for political parties to provide political education. This could be attained if political parties revealed their visions for the nation during the election campaign, which would allow the public to gain a sense of what the nation would look like if the parties won the election.

KOMPAS/ADITYA PUTRA PERDANA

Muslim, Catholic and other Christian residents of Thekelan hamlet, Batur village, Getasan district, Semarang regency, Central Java, line up to greet their Buddhist neighbors during Waisak on 19 May 2019. The community joined hands in a gesture of mutual forgiveness during the event, which coincided with the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

“Political parties must present their national vision clearly. The parties should not merely exploit primal identities like religion, ethnicity, race and others, in political contests,” said Haris.

Executive director Aditya Perdana of the University of Indonesia’s Center for Political Studies (Puskapol UI) said that it was difficult today to rely on political parties to provide effective political education, because many were too busy with internal matters, such as developing cadres.

Candidate requirements

Aditya said that the two-horse presidential election only heightened social friction, as the people could become divided in two opposing groups of supporters.

“Sharp societal division, like in the last election, must not occur again. The [presidential] candidacy requirement must be revised to allow more than two candidates,” said Aditya.

UI political science lecturer Hurriyah said that several matters should be observed in Indonesia’s democratization, based on indices issued by international institutes like Freedom House, as well ashe Bertelsmann Stiftung Transformation Index.

Freedom House, for instance, has placed Indonesia in the “partly free” instead of the “free” country category since 2015. “Our score on the index has declined,” said Hurriyah.

According to Freedom House’s website, 59 countries in the world are partly free, including Indonesia, while 86 countries are free and another 50 are not free.

Interestingly, a 2019 report on political and civil rights stated that democracy was declining around the world, while the 2018 Freedom in the World report said freedom had been declining steadily over the last 13 years. (REK/INK/HRS/AGE)