What did Soekarno do wrong?

Q : What did Soekarno do wrong?
A : He failed to keep social harmony.

Javanese culture is a representation of overall Indonesian culture. A scientist from United States, Clifford Geertz, was using Javanese culture in order to understand the Indonesian culture. With the same principle, to understand Indonesian political system and culture, understanding of Javanese culture is a must. Then, the “What did Soekarno do wrong?” can be explained using Javanese culture perspective.

Political culture is defined by the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences as the "set of attitudes, beliefs and sentiments that give order and meaning to a political process and which provide the underlying assumptions and rules that govern behavior in the political system". It encompasses both the political ideals and operating norms of a polity. Political culture is thus the manifestation of the psychological and subjective dimensions of politics. A political culture is the product of both the history of a political system and the histories of the members. Thus it is rooted equally in public events and private experience.[1]

The Javanese values of respect and the maintenance of social harmony (rukun) are basic principles of normative and moral guidance for social interaction within both the family and the community. The attitude of respect, described before by Geertz and Koentjaraningrat, is based on the lineal value orientation in social relationships. This respect also is reflected in Javanese social behaviour in other contexts, such as the workplace, schools, and political organizations. The strong emphasis on rukun (social harmony) has marked the typical Javanese as inexpressive, avoiding social and personal conflict. Geertz noted that to the Javanese " ... emotional equilibrium, emotional stasis, is of highest worth, and on the corresponding moral imperative to control one's impulses, to keep them out of awareness or at least unexpressed, so as not to set up reverberating emotional responses in others".[2]

As respect and social harmony in Javanese culture suggested, the same value of respect and social harmony is expected in Indonesian political culture. In the case of Soekarno is related to social harmony. (The respect is a important value in Indonesian political culture, but it is story for another time.) Soekarno did the social harmony issue inadequate (well, it was not completely wrong, but was wrong too). The failure of social harmony was main key to his fall after 1965.

Nasakom[3] (an abbreviation of ‘nasionalis, agama dan komunis’ —literally nationalist, religious and communist) was the main policy of Soekarno. In contrary to other answers in this question, nasakom was an attempt to create social harmony which is main value in Indonesian political culture. Thus, nasakom is actually a good answer in regards of Indonesian political culture which promote social harmony.

However, Soekarno failed to run the nasakom idea as Soekarno was ‘favoring’ the communist idea (well, Marhaenism[4], which proposed by Soekarno is undoubtly influenced by communist idea). This ‘favoring’ action resulted in other reaction which culminated in 30 September 1965[5] incident. In whatever reasons of the incident such as Communist Uprising, Army Distrust to Soekarno-led Central Government, Internal Army Conflict or United States Central Intelligence Agency Involvement, every possible causes has the same ultimate cause, which is failure to promote social harmony. Leader who failed to keep social harmony in Indonesia will soon or later have to go. The 30 September 1965 was the icon of social harmony failure.

Aftermath of 30 September 1965 incident, Indonesia still keep social harmony as an important Indonesian political culture value. Social harmony factor can be used to explain the Fall of Soeharto in 1998 and other recent incidents. Social harmony in Indonesia, afterall, still find its equilibrium point.

Thus at the end, social harmony is one of important value in Indonesian Political Culture. Ability to manage social harmony is implicit expectation to every Indonesian politicians. Soekarno was failed to manage social harmony and had to go.

Footnotes

[1] Political culture - Wikipedia

[2] http://www.nzdl.org/gsdlmod?e=d-...

[3] Nasakom - Wikipedia

[4] Marhaenism - Wikipedia

[5] 30 September Movement - Wikipedia

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