Although civil society, especially NGOs, are important in overseeing the government, the issues they voice often do not represent the interests of the people.
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RINI KUSTIASIH/INGKI RINALDI/NIKOLAUS HARBOWO/EDNA C PATTISINA
·4 minutes read
JAKARTA, KOMPAS – Although civil society, especially NGOs, are important in overseeing the government, the issues they voice often do not represent the interests of the people. In addition to the need to deepen the essence of the issue in order to make them more relevant to the public, civil society also needs to evaluate their activities to ensure they are in line with current challenges.
Such a narrative emerged from the self-criticism of a number of NGO activists during an interview with Kompas and from the Kompas Research and Development poll at the end of February 2020. According to the poll, 51.4 percent of respondents thought that the issues voiced by NGOs did not represent the interests of the public at large. However, 86.3 percent of respondents considered the civil society movement needed to oversee government activities.
Civil society is an organized group with certain autonomous values from the state. They can comprise NGOs, student movements, and religious community organizations.
In the midst of such limitations, the civil society is trying to be optimal.
In terms of issues that are considered of being most important, the poll indicated that millennials of between 17 to 30 year-old mostly chose issue related to the human rights, while the millennials of between 31 to 40 year-old, generation X of between 41 to 52 year-old and baby boomers of above 52 year-old mostly choose the issue of corruption eradication.
The advisor for the Democracy and Election Partnership, Wahidah Syuaib said in Jakarta on Thursday (05/03/2020), NGOs were trying to listen to issues and themes from the community related to people\'s interests. So far, civil society has so far based their activities in the reality in society. NGO activists, for example, have met with communities affected by an issue and public policy, such as farmers, fishermen, and women.
"Indeed, their budget t is limited so that it cannot touch all regions. However, in the midst of such limitations, the civil society is trying to be optimal," he said.
Transformation of movements
Haris Azhar, former coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) who is also the founder of Lokataru legal and human rights foundation, reminded that some civil society movements still applied the movement model before the reformation era. In fact, many factors have changed, such as those related to funding and the emergence of information technology.
Therefore, according to the chairman of the Constitution and Democracy Initiative Veri Junaidi, civil society also needed to adapt to the current challenges. Some external funding will probably no longer exist. In addition, there is also a tendency to collaborate instead of dealing with the state. In addition, there are also some young people who don’t know about the New Order regime. "Indeed, there is a need to change the future agenda," said Veri.
The head of the Indonesian Center for Political Research, Firman Noor, encouraged civil society organizations to look for new alternatives for their activities. This is important so that the community can assess the commitment of the civil society organizations amid the growing pressure from the government. The growing pressure can be seen from the general agenda of political stability and efficiency as well as the acceleration of economic development which was made top down.
Some civil society movements still applied the movement model before the reformation era.
However, the director of the Smeru Research Institute, Wijayanti said there was still space for cooperation between government and civil society. The government is usually more open as long as NGOs can present convincing data.
According to him, the input submitted by some NGOs was often disproportionate. Instead of submitting data to the government, they are more ideological. Cases are often used to generalize the problem and the analysis they presented is sometimes not comprehensive enough. He also considered, the adoption process made by civil society organization has been quite promising lately.
Meanwhile, in terms of funding, the professor of the political comparison of Airlangga University, Ramlan Surbakti called for the establishment of endowment for civil society. The funds can come from the state budget, corporate social responsibility funds or philanthropy. This fund should be managed by a special institution overseen by supervisors from the government, private sector or NGO representatives.