“Agent of Change” in The Name of Democracy

“Agent of Change” in The Name of Democracy

Nowadays, democracy is not merely about a special term of political activity but it has had many vague interpretations of the popular idea (Dahl, 1992: 12). Indonesia government stated that democracy is the basic of every single one of social and political activities, moreover Indonesia have Pancasila as a political system which had organized and united political, religious, and cultural pluralism. Ironically, Indonesian people which are represented by their young educated people unconsciously have broken those principles in terms of their way of arguing and delivering ideas especially in a demonstration.
According to philosophy of democracy that said democracy is not equal to free society but related to ethic. The ethics of politics do not focus on legitimating of the authority, but consider the contribution and participation of all people (Nurtjahjo, 2006: 26). The Contribution and participation of Mahasiswa are implemented by protecting all governments programs, and it worked in the past. Suharto’s regime was overthrown when there are many corruption, collusion, and nepotism cases in the programs by an extraordinary demonstration. How about nowadays? Demonstration does not exist in contribution and participation, but it can be said just as criticism without giving solution. The reason is that Mahasiswa do not know the core of the problem but always see the way of the government to solve the problems pessimistically.
Regarding demonstration, Abdalla (2008) stated that nowadays democracy is going to kill happiness of political activity as a vocation to be replaced by the criticism said routinely but it will break the form wanted but not be able to be realized. In this era, when the young educated people do a demonstration, it has two results; negative assumptions and anarchy. What I mean with negative assumptions is demonstration looks like an instant criminal justice system when the demonstrators can say everything and do judgement to direct person. They can decide that the programs are wrong, the government are corruption, the systems are lack, and the president has to be overthrown. It will end the good programs earlier caused by wrong method of criticism. It may keep the negative psychological sense or over distrustful of government. Consequently, there is no conducive democracy environment because what they do is not related to criticism. Criticism must produce optimism point of view (Indrayana, 2011: 15).
Talking about anarchy, mass media are never bored of showing the violent confrontation between police and demonstrators. Police as an institution that is responsible for protecting people and property, making people obey the law, finding out about and solving crime, and catching people who have committed a crime has done the right procedure. Why police do repressive action absolutely because there is a wrong action of the demonstrator which can disturb other people. On the other hand, Mahasiswa will use the law of human right to protect them from repressive action of police even though they do a wrong action. Let us take a look at the recently case in Bima. Mahasiswa think that there was an infraction of human rights whereas they did anarchy first. They did annoying activity and broke the buildings around there; this had the effect of making police must do a repressive action in order to prevent negative impact. Is what mahasiswa did democracy? Democracy has to be implemented in positive way based on ethic. We can do democracy when we can appreciate the differences among of us and do everything in right attitude.

Indonesian people seem to have forgotten why they are fighting this problem; they really need to return to first principles. Democracy is a system of government which places the ethics as the highest rule. Indonesian people also have Pancasila that have power to control and appreciate the pluralism (different perception of national problem). Mahasiswa should do everything in ethic, because what they do is representative of what they get in college. If Mahasiswa stated that they are an agent of change, they have to be aware that they cannot change something wrong by using wrong method.


References

Dahl, Robert A. 1992. Demokrasi dan Para Pengkritiknya (Terjemahan dari Democracy and Its Critics). Jakarta: Yayasan Obor Indonesia.
Geertz, Clifford. 1994. Politik Kebudayaan. Yogyakarta: Penerbit Kanisius.
Indrayana, Denny. 2011. Indonesia Optimis. Jakarta: PT Bhuana Ilmu Populer.
Nurtjahjo, Hendra. 2008. Filsafat Demokrasi. Jakarta: PT Bina Aksara.