Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court Mahfud MD when giving a lecture in âLecturer Series on Democracyâ program held by Faculty of Social and Political Science of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Jakarta on Tuesday (5/4) afternoon.
Jakarta, MKOnline - “If our country wish to fix our democracy, then we have to fix the constitution first; because in the history of our country, past constitution is no longer conducive for developing democracy. Now, let us make changes to the constitution,” stated the Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court (The Court) Mahfud MD on “Lecture Series on Democracy” program held by the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (FISIP) of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN Syarif Hidayatullah) Jakarta, Tuesday (5/4) afternoon.
At the moment, continued Mahfud, the development of democracy in Indonesia had become a paradox. Some says that the democracy in Indonesia now had advanced while some others considered it as over the limit.
“Those who says the democracy has advanced consider for example, people are free to make a political party on condition of having 50 members. Thus they say our democracy is good because it does not block people’s basic right to make a political party,” explained Mahfud.
Besides, press in Indonesia is now free in telling any stories without scared of being forced to shut down like in the past. Others, continued Mahfud, people movements in Indonesia had developed much better than in the past. Also added by the implementation of Presidential election and Regional Heads elections directly and democratically, “That is why Indonesia is called as the third biggest democratic country in the world,” added Mahfud in front of academicians of FISIP UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta.
On the other side, said Mahfud, people who considered that democracy in Indonesia had gone backward and over the limit in anarchy took an example from the spreading of transactional politics in regional election, issues on vote transaction, money politics to win a certain candidate pair.
Another indication of declining democracy in Indonesia was due to high level of corruption in Indonesia. “We have often heard people committing corruption of trillions of rupiah. With such condition, can we say that Indonesian democracy has developed?” wondered Mahfud.
Related to democracy, Mahfud quoted the words of famous thinkers Plato and Aristotle. According to these two figures, democracy was a bad form of government. It was because democracy is a misleading system as it leaves to the people the choices on state guidelines; even though the people do not know much about state administration.
Besides that, a government which was based on the choice of many people could easily be influenced by demagogs which could easily turn into dictators. Democracy according to Plato and Aristotle was very fragile to manipulations often said to be on behalf of the people or nation merely for the sake of the elites of the nation.
“Plato’s and Aristotle’s opinion is confirmed by the democracy in our country nowadays. The raise of the demagogs who fight to be a political officer in the election and regional elections give sweet talks to the voters. Yet, after they are chosen, they ignored their promises and cannot do anything in order to fix them.” Mahfud explained.
Because of that, Mahfud reminded the importance of law sovereignty aspect or nomocracy in state management. Therefore, if we wished to fix this country, the key was that democracy and nomocracy had to get along well. Democracy could not be realized without law enforcement. Democracy demanded clear rules of the game. Democracy without nomocracy could be in anarchy while nomocracy without democracy could be executed arbitrarily. (Nano Tresna A/mh/YDJ)
Tuesday, April 05, 2011 | 16:00 WIB 287