Enhancing Democracy

Kompas

Yudi Latif

The soul of democracy in Indonesia faces threats from three epidemics: poor logic, ethical decadence and hardened expression. The threats from those epidemics are potentially harmful to democracy, because – as Juergen Habermas (1983) put it – the well-being of public space needs balanced interaction between cognitive-scientific, practical-moral and expressive-aesthetics.

Poor logic is reflected in the rush to generalize and make claims using reckless binary logic (black and white). An example of this trend was a question raised at a public discussion, “Is the holy book fiction or not?”

If the holy book were fiction, the reality about the existence of the Prophet Muhammad, Jesus Christ and Siddhartha Gautama, as told in the holy book, should be seen as fiction. This is a denial of the historic fact about the existence of those three holy figures. After all, most parts of the holy book contain historic stories based on factual reality (at least according to the faith of their followers). The remainder is doctrinal narratives, prophecies and eschatology, which is close to fiction. Reckless generalization by saying that the holy book is fiction reflects poor scientific logic, which is politically less sensitive to political correctness in the public discourse of a diverse society.

Insensitivity to the need for political correctness also reflects eroded public ethics. Over the past several years, the public discourse has included increasing hate speech through the fabrication of exclusive and discriminative identity politics. Verbal attacks were launched without empathy toward those of a different identity. We seem to forget that our being part of the nation requires the virtue of civility, namely a sense of bonding and tolerance of differences as well as a readiness to share beyond the interests of the group, behave softly and submit to civil order.

That said, the response to failures in public discourse should come neither in the form of policies to silence certain opinions nor in the form of prosecution. Punishing someone only because of poems – an art that enjoys freedom or licentia poetica – or because of wrongly drawn conclusions from public discourse can threaten democracy.

It should be understood that healthy democracy needs a strong expressive-aesthetic culture. Freedom of speech is not only a negative right that must be protected from any kind of effort to silence views, but it is also a positive right that must be sharpened, so that citizens are smart enough to express their views and aspirations aesthetically (without resorting to violence).

In relation to democracy and freedom, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) through his book On Liberty warns of the death of freedom due to coercion on argument. Mill strongly rejects calls from the public to ban views people do not agree with. Silencing an opinion is a crime under the principle that everyone is free to express his or her view. Freedom of speech must be protected, because humans are not infallible. Because humans potentially make mistakes, a lack of tolerance for different opinions is wrong.

Mill does not talk in the context of an authoritarian state or dictatorship. When Mill wrote the book, the freedom of expression was legally protected in the United Kingdom. However, under such circumstances a new threat emerges, namely that of an intolerant society. In a democracy, the threat to the freedom of speech comes no longer from the state as in authoritarian countries, but from the public.

Mill’s worry over the potential threat to democratic freedom from the public gains relevance with the emergence of fanaticism in Indonesia’s public sphere. Fanaticism, both secular and religious, is iconoclastic, rejecting representation in politics, rejecting different opinions and rejecting aesthetic expression.

With its claim to be the guardian of “truth”, this fanatic group tends to be anti-freedom and resorts to violent acts in fighting for its goals. Thus, fanaticism hampers the effort of democratic consolidation that requires inclusiveness, the readiness to transcend from unavoidable differences toward the substance for the common good.

So, it is not enough to solve problems of democracy in Indonesia by changing the hardware of electoral procedures or legislation. A more substantial task is to develop the software of democratic culture in the form of cognitive-scientific awareness, practical ethics and expressive aesthetics.

Yudi Latif, Chairman, Presidential Working Unit for the Implementation of Pancasila Ideology