Tere, the Political Idealist

Political parties have been recruiting public figures especially artists to join them for many decades.

For example former Miss Indonesia Angelina Sondakh (Angie) and singer Theresia Pardede (Tere) who were recruited to join President SBY's Democrat Party, and elected as members of the House of Representatives for the term 2009-2014.

This kind of deal brings a win-win benefit for the artists and the political party. On the one hand, the artist got a chance to have a career as a states-person, therefore they can get lots of money. On the other hand the political party can expect to easily get more popular votes during elections.

The fact that politicians always been reluctant to release their public offices although the Police have named them as suspects in crime, have made me believe that those artists really enjoy their political status and would not want to release it.

           
But now I realized that my above assumption is wrong, that is after Tere (32) told the media last Friday that on 21 May 2012 she has resigned from the House of Representatives and the Democrat Party.

She was quoted as saying that she wants to take care of her father who is suffering heart illness. She is also very sad that Corruption still exist although political Reform (Reformasi) has been carried out 14 years ago.
And as a person who took part in the 1998 students demonstration to support Reformasi, she felt very sad that she cannot do anything to improve all that in her position as member of the House of Representatives.

I really respect Tere's decision to resign from political life, and hope that other artist-turned-politician would follow her path and give lesson to political parties i.e never forget that the main goal of Reformasi is to eliminate Corruption in Indonesia.

Photo : Courtesy of Tempo.

Is Pancasila still Relevant?

 

On 1 June 1958, Indonesia's first President, Soekarno, delivered a speech saying that Pancasila i.e. Five Principles, is the ideology of the the Republic, since then the said date has been celebrated as the birth date of Pancasila.

Pancasila consists of the following idealistic principles :  1) Belief in One God;  2) Civilized Humanity; 3)  Indonesian Unity;  4) Representative Democracy;   5) Social Justice.

Before liberal democracy came to Indonesia on May 1998, the ruling governments of President Soekarno (1945-1966) and President Soeharto (1966-1998), have force the adoption and implementation of Pancasila in the sense that every people and organizations must adopt Pancasila as a single ideology, otherwise they would face legal consequences.

The introduction of liberal democracy after Soeharto stepped down from 32 years of authoritarian rule on May 1998 is like the opening of a Pandora Box that enabled all sorts of social disease to come to Indonesia.

Every people and organizations in Indonesia are free to adopt all kinds of ideologies they want, whether they are moderate, or extreme, fanatic, religious, tribal etc (except Communism).
As a result, the belief of the majority of the country's population i.e the Religion of Islam, became the ideology of many socio-political organizations.

The adoption of religious ideology by extreme and fanatic people has caused social conflicts in provinces of Maluku, and Central Sulawesi, also a series of suicide bombings of innocent local and foreigners, in Jakarta and Bali.

Moreover, indecisiveness and failure to enforce laws against repetitive violent actions by fanatic organizations like the FPI against Christians and Ahmadiyah, has made those organizations more stronger, and weaken the government.

In spite of the above mentioned facts, I believe that Pancasila is still relevant for a multi-racial, tribal, religion, country like Indonesia, provided that the Rule of Law is upheld, therefore the concepts of Supremacy of Law, Presumption of Innocence, and Equality before the Law is maintained.


Symbol :  Courtesy of Wikipedia.