by WARD BERENSCHOT & GERRY VAN KLINKEN
Digital citizens and citizen journalism are an important evolution in Indonesian citizenship. PHOTO/Anton Muhajir
What does exercising citizenship in Indonesia’s democracy look like?
In 1997, a lively public meeting took place in Semarang to commemorate the Youth Pledge of the early anti-colonial movement. The Solo poet Moedrick M Sangidoe read out a poem that started like this:
I am a citizen of a country
No longer clear what kind of country
I am a citizen of a country
(Aku warga sebuah negeri / yang tak jelas lagi wajahnya / aku warga sebuah negeri)
It went on sarcastically to say he was so numbed by state ceremonies, he forgot he’d only had rotten dry rice to eat. That sounded a bit like the Roman cry ‘I am a Roman citizen’ (Civis Romanus sum), claiming the right to protection. Seven months later, Suharto was forced to step down.
Citizenship is back in Indonesia. The New Order tried its best to castrate the concept by picturing it as a duty only to obey, but democracy is making ordinary people realise they have rights too.
This special edition of Inside Indonesia looks at citizenship. We won’t do ‘civics education’ here – let’s leave that to the school textbooks. Instead, we look at the way flesh-and-blood Indonesians practise it on a daily basis. What do they do? What do they believe?
Focusing on citizenship is a change from blaming or praising elites for everything that happens in this country. As if people were just passive electoral fodder! After all, if democracy goes well in Indonesia, it goes well because citizens make it work, not just because elites have built the right institutions. Conversely, if democracy worsens, it is also because citizens didn’t do enough to protest the selfishness of their elites.
Inside Indonesia for more