Dialectics of Common Sense

Kompas

Mochtar Pabottingi

The position of those who are in abstention and others against it has been represented by two figures of integrity, Haris Azhar and Father Magnis, at Satu Meja The Forum at Kompas TV (18/3/2019).

The discussion between the two was too short. It needed elaboration, especially concerning the depth of disappointment at the incumbent and the thick resistance to the opponent.

Here we are drawn to an area of ambiguity due to the clash of two positions, which are equally virtuous, righteous, and weighty. We are dealing with hierarchies, not antinomies. Therefore it is not easy to make judgment. To get out of and overcome the ambiguity of the dignity of each position, we must first illuminate and clear it from weeds, then look at the political horizon -- the horizon of public civilization -- as far as possible in the context of our history.

Moral perspective

We are grateful that our nation-state stands on a democratic system in thick diversity. There is always space available for political deliberation where everything that is ambiguous can be examined. "Politics, on the best side," wrote William Connolly (1987), "is a medium in which essential ambiguities can be opened and addressed." But it has to be immediately added with the most important task of politics, namely to discover, climb, and pursue virtues in the middle inevitability of diversity.

Clearing the weeds and illuminating the ambiguity, apart from undoubtedly dismantling latent ignorance, is one of the paths to disclosure in the field of substantive virtue that is much wider and higher. That is the main preoccupation of the great political philosophers of all times, from Aristotle, Marx, Nietzsche, Arendt, to Rawls. We know that as in the realm of faith where there are veils of darkness, in the political realm there are veils of ignorance. Our first task is to uncover the veils of darkness and weakness so that we can follow the path we call the "dialectics of common sense".

Father Magnis (Kompas, 12/3/2019) emphasized that there are only three possibilities for the assessment of a man in abstention, "Stupid; parasitic; or mentally unstable, a psycho." In hard words, vindictive, and looks as if he is not born from a master of philosophy. But, that is the way the brief treatise was written. Perhaps especially in this presidential election, for Father Magnis there is no room for "abstention" and/or indecision attitudes. "Not participating because of the absence of candidate who really fits your ideals, sorry, it’s a sign of ignorance." "In a democracy we must give our share." "Not obligatory by law, but morally obligatory."

Haris Azhar chose to be in abstention and objected to the simplification that anyone, who does not participate to vote, is immoral. The Jokowi government is indeed not included in the decades cycle of gross human rights violations in the country. But, over the past five years, the government has also been marked with the impression of ignorance in resolving human rights cases, not only on those from past decades but also those that have taken place recently, as in the case of Novel Baswedan. Jokowi has also been considered not to have passed the defense test for minorities. This is as negative as its complicity in the politicization of religion even though by detour, indirectly.

From a moral perspective it is just as bad as in the behavior of violating, the practice of letting go, and the practice of not caring about human rights violations and the practice of submission to the dictation of the majority tyranny. Like Munir, Haris Azhar is upright on the basis to take side to all the victims of human rights violations. For him, choosing to be in abstention is precisely an affirmation of moral attitude and responsibility.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the use of moral considerations as part of Father Magnis’ arguments to reject abstention, especially in Haris’ case, is not appropriate. It could also be said that Haris’ decision to be in abstention goes beyond Father Magnis’ moral position in rejecting the abstention. The position of Father Magnis is also likely to be stronger if those being judged are not only the two presidential candidates per se but the two presidential candidates along with all the camps and their bonding complexities.

Two political bets

From the reasoning above, it can be said that the position of Haris, which is based solely on moral considerations, is also inappropriate. Because, the magnitude plus complexity of the risks we face in the 2019 presidential election are truly cross-dimensional and with a scale of bad risk that can multiply -- an intersection that can be antagonistically radical. Maybe this intersection is the one which fills Father Magnis’ mind. In other words, there is a giant political bet that escapes the attention of Haris but is not openly disclosed by Father Magnis.

Let us enter the scale of the problem through a genealogical approach and from there try to transcend the problem. At present, our nation is dealing with two of the biggest political bets -- two political bets that will reduce the power of rationality to reduce Haris’ stance on abstention. First, we know, on May 20, 1998, there was no regime change. Not only did Soeharto step down without government accountability, the second person of the New Order actually became the first person of the reform era. Therefore, the opportunity for the application of transitional justice vanished and what was applied was the broad impunity.

The accompanying impact was the political tug of war between the reformation front and the New Order front. Our nation-state was like being pegged to continuously run in limbo, renewal, and competition between the corpus of the corrupt regime and the corpus of virtues that have just germinated like a plague without ending. Nearly all cases of disappointment with Jokowi from his strong supporters in 2014 were actually restored to the fait accompli of the tug of war, including the impact of the transmission of decay in the body of law enforcement agencies following the glorification of impunity due to Soeharto\'s downfall.

Of the three regimes before the reform, it was the New Order which was de facto known as the carrier of the gigantic multidimensional disaster not only for our entire nation, but also for the whole elements of politics and statehood. The Indonesian genocide was the worst after the Nazi Holocaust. And, as stated by John Bresnan (1999), the destruction of the Indonesian economy was beyond compare since the Malaise of the 1930s. Now, with the 2019 presidential election, our nation is led to the chance of a two-decade end of the tug of war between the New Order and the reform. We are standing right on the boundary line -- the point where the situation of tug of war can pass instantly and our nation-state can be taken away again by the "Continuation of the New Order".

Second, the political bets are clearly worse and unfortunately again seeing eye to eye with the New Order. Since 2016, in a part of Muslims there has been a massive, systematic, and planned authorization of identity politics which claimed absolute truth in religion and spread hatred in all directions, including to internal Muslims themselves. The analogy with Suharto\'s New Order is clear. We remember how Ali Murtopo used to use hard-line elements among Muslims to preserve the New Order.

Various studies in the country show that the process of Islamic radicalization began two-three decades ago, even officially through secondary state schools. In all of these there is the flow of funds and dictation by foreign parties/countries. In the GPS show on CNN (7/4), Fareed Zakaria called a 212 figure an extension of the government of Saudi Arabia in the spread of Wahabi Islam in our country. A sort of Talibanization. Karen Armstrong once exposed the same symptoms and perpetrators in other Muslim countries with the same perpetrator. And, we know how much political destruction it has caused. The cool teachings of Islam that generally mark the life of our nation up to hundreds of years into the past is being discarded, replaced by narrow arbitrary teachings of the mind which absolutes its own truth.

Included in this line of understanding of intolerant Islam are those who openly want to replace the set of noble political foundations where our Republic is established. HTI, which is estimated to remain active underground, is one of its leaders. In The Challenge of Fundamentalism (1998), Bassam Tibi stated, what intolerant Muslims first wanted to destroy is none other than the nation-state and/or democracy-state, which they view as a Western heretical product. They take advantage of every democratic agenda and nationality to undermine both of them from within.

Nationality and democracy are two products of the brilliant mind of modern times. Bung Karno gave us a commendable version of nationalism, namely the "airy and wide air". The Founding Fathers of the Nation also give us a definitive formulation of democracy "Popularism led by wisdom in representative deliberation," is not the one being forced by identity mobilization.

Moral wisdom

In the 2019 presidential election, common sense requires us to dismiss a variety of narrow considerations to reach and/or arrive at the milestones of substantive virtues as widely and in a noble way as possible. It encourages us to be aware of the hierarchy of humiliation and uphold the hierarchy of virtues on the basis of an understanding of the foundation of our nation-state, including the dialectic of its historical development until now.

Commmon sense leads us at any time to be aware of progression traps and political regression traps in the 2019 presidential election. We must be wary of all deceptions that idolize capital and celebrate oligarchs, just as we must be aware of the politics of coercive identity and all the ridiculous delusions of the caliphate.

Here our choices can no longer based solely on the personal merit of a presidential candidate, but rather from a count of policies that are capable of reading in relation to various conditions, connections, dynamics, dialectics, and traps for our nation\'s political life. In welcoming the 2019 presidential election we must be able ensure the guarantee of equality in diversity, persistence in Pancasila, and the preservation of the nation-state and democratic state.

It is at this point that we cross the realm of moral wisdom where Haris and Father Magnis equally rely and enter the realm which was called by Aristotle, practical wisdom. The practical wisdom is on the opposite side and above moral wisdom. It is wisdom which can holistically-intuitively capture the overall virtues. Here morality is transcended by virtues in the broadest sense according to the dialectic of the political history of our nation-state.

In the process of transcendence "the veil of darkness" and/or "veil of weakness" are revealed. Simply relying on the defense of those whose human rights are violated or to the disgust on the flirtation of the tyranny of the majority or because of disappointment at the presidential candidate who was previously worshiped (and therefore choosing to be in abstention) can be a veil of weakness which makes us neglect the danger of exponential expansion of potential human rights violations plus the persecution of various minorities because of our refusal to vote. Consideration of moral wisdom only sees one dimension. The straightforward consideration of wisdom sees virtues in various dimensions. Consideration of moral wisdom emphasizes consumption of morality in the life of nation-democracy. The consideration of straightforward virtues emphasizes the consumption of the totality of noble ideals in the guarantee of the continuity of nation-democracy.

We do not only believe that the principle of nationality and the principle of democracy are equally absolute in modern times but also that one will be impossible to stand up without the other. Guided Democracy dumped democracy and paved the way for the New Order to dump both the building of democracy and nationalism. Behind their rhetoric deception, that is exactly what religious fundamentalists want to promote with identity politics.

This article is only one version of the truth according to accumulation and/or levels of common sense underlying it. It does not claim absolute truth at all, which would have been impossible for any human. It is only a product of the

effort to mobilize maximum common sense to cooperate with the truth, whose inevitability of its limitations requires us to also have wills with patience. With those two wills, we should still be invited to vote.

Mochtar Pabottingi, Research Profess at LIPI 2000-2010