Democracy's slow fixes

A propos my previous post, there have been some very interesting pieces on religion in Indonesia over the last couple of months.

Endy Bayuni, a senior editor at the Jakarta Post, recently warned that Indonesia risks a “downgrade of its democratic rating” on account of issues such as “the ridiculously light sentences meted by a court against the murderous perpetrators of a mob attack on followers of Ahmadiyah, a religious sect that mainstream Muslims in Indonesia have denounced as heretic”.

He’s right, insofar as Indonesia’s credentials to push human rights within ASEAN, which it has tried very hard to do, are undermined by events that clearly spotlight problems at home. There are many in Southeast Asia who would be happy to mention glass houses and stones.

And his warning may be a useful flea in the ear of a government that is very concerned with international image.

But at a time when various democratic endeavours are under way in the world, it is also worth remembering that democracy does not automatically equate with a linear or quick path to peace, and dealing with minorities is one of its toughest challenges.

As Tim Lindsey put it in an interview earlier this year, Indonesia is no longer a dictatorship, but a real multi-party democracy, with all the contestation that involves. So, the state often finds itself caught in the middle, between different representations of Islam. Because the president’s power is limited, and he needs to make deals with the legislature to get anything done, coalitions and alliances are the order of the day. It is sometimes politically difficult to make a stand on issues that small but powerful groups of opponents can easily use against him. (No doubt such considerations were also behind FM Marty's bland response to the Ahmadiyah verdicts.)

Furthermore, as Lindsey points out, radical conservative Islamist groups don’t do well in Indonesian elections: “These tensions aren’t because the conservatives are winning, it is precisely because they are losing in mainstream politics. Their votes have fallen, they have less control. What they do have is a little bit of leverage. And they are maximising the benefit they get from that.”

Unfortunately, he continues, they have been able to hijack the debate. Islam in Indonesia “is still overwhelmingly extraordinarily tolerant. Extraordinarily moderate. And very open. But you wouldn’t know it, reading the newspapers, not just internationally, but in Indonesia as well.” (And one of my fears is that every post like this one, however well-meant, distracts attention from that key point.)

Decentralization – on the face of it also a democratic impetus – has brought problems, too. In a recent piece for Inside Indonesia, Melissa Crouch notes that an increasing number of district and provincial governments have sought to limit Ahmadiyah’s activities, even though the legal grounds for doing so are shaky. There is a sort of vicious circle at work here: attacks on Ahmadis appear to have motivated local governments to introduce bans.

I had many conversations on this subject in Indonesia earlier this year. Absolutely everyone I spoke to roundly condemned the violence. But I also talked to many people who were highly educated, thoroughly democratic, thoroughly opposed to intimidation and brutality, and absolutely not religiously “hard line” – yet still thought there should be some limitations on Ahmadiyah.

Commentary perhaps too readily assumes that “democratic” will automatically and immediately equate to “secular” and a particular kind of “liberal”. Polls in SEA still throw up many results that do not fit that mould (this is one example). And I have had many conversations with students who wholeheartedly desire political participation, but are less eager to embrace across-the-board liberalization.

Many “vibrant debates” are going on in Indonesia about how to be “a multi-ethnic, multi-faith country of tolerance” – but every new democracy will have to work out its own way of doing that. And the working-out process is often not going to look very glorious.