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.