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under over 30 years of dictatorship, when a group of people, when the nation was
under dictatorship for over 3 decades, and then we got freedom. Our attitude
towards freedom sometimes is very unstable. An opportunity seen by so many groups
as a way to shape the direction of the nation’s future. So, many groups based on
ethnicity, based on religion, based on political ideology. They’re trying to compete with
each other to shape the future of Indonesia since 1998. The dissolution, as
I mentioned earlier here, that majority of Indonesian people are Muslims. And
Indonesian Muslims have been known for the smiling face of Islam. Recently that
smiling face changed into more grumpy face which is unfortunately, but that
happened. This is a picture of what happened in 1998 when people’s power forced
Suharto to step down from his power.
Since my talk is mostly about interfaith dialog, and Islam is the majority, I need
to mention about the relationship between Suharto and the authoritarian regime leader
with Islam. In Indonesia in 1965, there was huge tragedy of the massacre of the
communist over 500 million were killed during the tragedy. And Islam, as the religion
of the majority was used by the military as an ally to fight against the communist
and it works relatively effectively. However, after 1965 finished, the communist
already finished, then the regime turns their suspects to Islam because they are the
largest group. So, from being an ally, eventually it’s treated as another suspect after
1965 communist massacre. And the regime launched modernization project.
However, Muslims are marginalized from there. Therefore, also they’re the largest
group. Islam Indonesia is well knowns as majority with minority mentality because of
this process of marginalization. However, after three decades of modernization,
eventually kind of unintended consequence of modernization project, Muslim is the
one who eventually take benefit from modernization project. By 1990, they already
become a big group, politically and economically, and they cannot be ignored
anymore. Eventually, Suharto, from being marginalized them, now take Muslim in
1990 as a favorite ally because of this economic and political potential and at the
same time the support from military to Suharto already decline. Therefore, when
Suharto stepped down from the power in 1999, 1998 then political Islam returned to
the stage.
After Suharto was forced to step down from power, we have achieved some
wonderful achievement. Among the others is the regular free and fair election every
five years. We have multi-party system, directly elected president, government,
governor, president and even lower level of the leaders. So, in every office now,
the leader is elected by the public. That’s one of the fruits of 1999, 1998 reformation.
We also have free press, better accountability, local autonomy, and decentralization.
ª£¸²£ª±¡¡²¥¸h¡¢h¢µÈ especially anything related to the regime. But today, every journalist can write
In relation to free press during the Suharto era, journalists were not free to write,
anything. Therefore sometimes, we got too many presses because everybody
understands the concept of freedom very differently. Military since 1998 is out of
politics. From time to time we have equal distribution of power, and stronger House
