The Rise of “Liberal Democracy” in Indonesia
Indonesia has been known as a democratic country since its independency in August 17, 1945. Following the fall of the first presidency of Ir. Sukarno who veered indonesia toward communism, Indonesia sustained an authoritarian democratic system for approximately 30 years under Suharto presidency. The resignation of Suharto marked the end of the new order era in 1998. Struggling to find a better mean of governance, Indonesia started a massive mind shaping from a guided-liberal point of view toward a more religious-democratic system.
A heavy implementation of morality policy after the new order has led to an extreme discrimination experienced by several minority groups in Indonesia. Several human rights violations in Indonesia remain unsolved. One of the newest case of discrimination that successfully masked up by Indonesian cyber security system was the tragedy of racism experienced by Papuan college students in Surabaya, East Java following the commemoration of Indonesia independence day. This incidence triggered massive peace demonstrations in several regions in Papua Province by human rights activists. However, the government responded using military forces and detained several human rights activists with the allegation of separatism in 2019.
During this pandemic, it seems people started to forget what was happening and focus more on building back the community after pandemic. The country seems to be economically recovered from the covid-19 although many sociopolitical problems were ignored during its process. One thing that can be appreciated is people start to care more about mental health, economic disparity and the importance of vaccines. Social media users or influencers in Indonesia also start to build awareness about women rights, LGBT+ rights and the birth of sexual consent regulation proposed by the Ministry of Culture and Education of Indonesia.
All of those morality policies indicate the alteration of mindset from traditional thinking to more inclusive or open minded ideology that are common in a developed and liberal country such as the United States. This could be a sign of Indonesia readiness to be one of the new economic super power countries in the world. However, the traditional thinking of Indonesia as a religious country is still hard to neglect due to the existence of rooted religious organizations that still have a significant impact on the political system in Indonesia.
