Hafid Abbas
Chairman of the Indonesian Community Education Association
The Former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan (2005) once said: “The human family will not enjoy development without security, will not enjoy security without development, and will not enjoy either without respect for human rights.”
Taking Kofi Annan’s words into account, the World Bank’s publication, Indonesia’s Rising Divide (2016), shows that Indonesia is in danger of split and deterioration. According to the World Bank, four factors threaten the safety of this country in the future.
First, there is inequality in creating opportunities for all citizens to improve their abilities in order to advance and succeed. There are certain groups that have the most opportunity for development in the economic, social, and social domains. Some, on the other hand, are excluded and left behind.
Second, the poor are progressively being left behind and becoming poorer because they lack the necessary qualifications to compete with the upper class in the modern economic sector. As a result, with limited knowledge and skills, they can only find work in the low-wage informal economy. Furthermore, their economic disparity with wealthier ethnic minority groups is rising.
Third, in this country, the concentration of money and capital circulation is centered just on a few people or a few minority group enterprises. As a result, according to the Ministry of SOEs (2019), 56,534,592 MSMEs (99.99 percent) were left out of banking support. Furthermore, those who are poor, such as poor farmers and fishermen, are untouched by bank subsidies.
Fourth, the World Bank was startled that Indonesia was deemed rotten from the inside because of the impoverished people, the majority of whom did not have resources to pay for the education of their children and progeny, as well as save for health bills in their old age (p. 28).
As a result of these four factors, Indonesia’s divisions and deterioration are expanding until it finally breaks apart.
Surprisingly, while Finance Minister Sri Mulyani claimed that 80 percent of Indonesia’s rich people’s assets were hidden in Singapore (Straits Times, 21/7/2016), President Jokowi claimed that Rp 11,000 trillion of the rich people’s money was also hidden in various countries (Setkab, 6/12/2016).
This has attracted the attention of Vice President Jusuf Kalla (JK). He remarked, “In comparison to other countries, the gap in Indonesia is rather dangerous. In Thailand, rich and poor people practice the same religion. In the Philippines, rich and poor people practice the same faith. Meanwhile, rich and poor Indonesians practice various religions.” (Warta Ekonomi, February 26th, 2017).
Furthermore, JK explained that in Indonesia most of the rich people are people of Confucian or Christian descent, while the poor are mostly Muslim and some are Christian.
LaNyalla: Injustice is the Source of Poverty
Returning to Kofi Annan’s statement, a nation would not be able to live in peace or grow if its people are not humanized and treated fairly. According to the World Bank, Indonesia is not here to provide justice to its people.
According to LaNyalla, the starting point for the recession and mass poverty was injustice caused by the country’s political and economic policy failures. And this miscalculation is becoming more legitimate as a result of the nation’s Constitutional Amendments from 1999 to 2002. The Indonesian National School of Economics has shifted from the original plan conceived by the nation’s founders (Haluan, 15/6/2022).
The Indonesian School of Economics has actually been designed very thoroughly by the founders of this nation. It has even become a national goal, namely to advance the general welfare and educate the nation’s children. The essence of the ideals that led to the birth of this nation is to realize the Ultimate Precepts of Pancasila, namely Social Justice for All Indonesian People.
The founding fathers of the nation, especially Muhammad Hatta, prepared the editorial of Article 33 of the 1945 Constitution very carefully. Even the Article, in the Original Manuscript of the 1945 Constitution, was written in the Social Welfare Chapter. The meaning is clear, this country actually adheres to a just welfare state system, or the Welfare Justice State. State control of natural resources is based on state sovereignty and is used for the maximum benefit of the people’s prosperity, not for certain minority groups.
According to LaNyalla, the existence of the Presidential Threshold in the process of selecting national leaders is one of the conditions that initiates the infiltration of Economic Oligarchy to hold power hostage and force power to stand with them.
The expense of consolidating political parties that were forced into a coalition to carry the presidential and vice presidential candidates rose from there. This cost is the point at which the Economic Oligarchy can both finance and hold power captive.
As a result, before it is too late, the Presidential Threshold must be promptly reduced to zero percent, and the 1945 Constitution must be revised again in accordance with the spirit of the preamble, or the 1945 Constitution must be returned to its original form before it was amended in 1999.
APENMASI and the War against Poverty
In accordance with Kofi Annan’s view that requires the presence of development, peace and human rights in a balanced and harmoniously integrated manner in every line of life of a nation, and the urgency to prevent the enlargement of Economic Oligarchy and Political Oligarchy, the Indonesian Community Education Association (APENMASI) is spread across in a number of PTN (Public College) and PTS (Private College) have presented a strategic agenda that focuses on poverty alleviation.
APENMASI is a forum for experts, researchers, scientists, and public education practitioners spread across various PTN (Public College) and PTS (Private College) throughout the country who have given special attention to continuing to work through their tri-dharma activities to free this nation from all forms of poverty and backwardness.
On March 6, 2019, the Vice President of the Republic of Indonesia, Jusuf Kalla, announced APENMASI as a national movement at the Vice President’s Palace. On the Agenda, 18 target categories of individuals were defined as having a high level of social and economic vulnerability, such as poor farmers, indigenous peoples, migrant workers, malnourished children, and so on. There are 128 true strategic objectives out of that number that have been and will continue to be implemented in various tri-dharma actions to free the people from the burdens of poverty.
This agenda can be adopted by all Regency/City and Provincial Governments to free their people from poverty by collaborating with local state and private universities.
In accordance with the mandate of the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia, the Government advances science and technology by upholding religious values and national unity for the advancement of civilization and the welfare of mankind (Article 31 Paragraph 5).
The presence of 4593 colleges (Dikti, 2020) must become a unifying tool for the nation because it produces superior human resources who master science and technology and innovate for the advancement of modern civilization and the glorification of humanity. Public and private colleges must be the “Brain of the State” to free this nation from all forms of backwardness.
Finally, APENMASI is presently strengthening its institutions in all PTN and PTS that have a Community Education Study Program or a similar Study Program by partnering with all necessary parties at the center and regions to free the surrounding community from all types of underdevelopment. The poor and disadvantaged have been employed as social laboratories through this Study Program, similar to the Study Center established by Muhammad Yunus at Dhaka University in Bangladesh to liberate its people from poverty, which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.