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Is Indonesia Pancasila (?)

Garuda as the national emblem and core values of Indonesia

        

On 6 and 9 August 1945, the two atomic bombs dropped in two cities of Japan Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A few days later, the unconditional Japan surrender to the Allied Forces leaded Indonesian people to make use of this opportunity to proclaim their independence from Japan’s colonialism on 17 August 1945. Along with this patriotic event, it also signified the creation of Garuda, the national emblem of Indonesia. The main part of this emblem is the existence of the national motto ‘Bhinneka Tunggal Ika’ translated as “Unity in Diversity”, along with the five principles represented as 5 symbols of Indonesia’s national ideology, which is called Pancasila. Pancasila consists of two words, "panca" meaning five, and "sila" meaning value. According to Barnes (2007) the five principle of Pancasila can be loosely translated as ‘belief in one God, nationalism, humanitarianism, social justice and democracy’.

1.   BELIEF IN ONE GOD

2.   JUST AND CIVILIZED HUMANITY

3.   THE NATIONAL UNITY OF INDONESIA

4.   DEMOCRACY GUIDED BY THE INNER WISDOM IN THE UNANIMITYARISING FROM DELIBERATIONS AMONG REPRESENTATIVES

5.   SOCIAL JUSTICE FOR ALL INDONESIANS

Indonesia is the largest archipelago in the world with more than 18,000 islands. These make Indonesia rich with various cultures, ethnics, and races. As the world’s 4th largest country in the world, with a population of 261.1 million (World Bank, 2016), it is necessary to hold these five core values of toleration among diversity to unify the country.

Disintegration of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika

On the morning of 1 June 2016, Jokowi as the current president of Indonesia signed the Presidential Decree No. 24 of 2016 established ‘Pancasila Day’ in order to commemorate the father of Pancasila’s famous speech back on 1 June 1945. Sadly, this celebration moment also followed by various events that are related to the intolerance issues among Indonesians.

Orientalism and Argo

Argo movie presented the story on how CIA sneaked six American diplomats out of Iran during the crisis on November 1979. Iran used to be ruled under various different regimes, until 1953 Reza Pahlevi took over the country and westernized Iran. He opened the foreign investment and allowed the US to invest on their oil. Ironically, he lived in wealth while the people lived in starve and poor condition. In 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini replaced him and successfully ruled Iran. He tried to return the oil to its citizen, fix the catastrophic condition, and also leaded the chaos, anger to the US, which made the citizen started to attack the US embassy.

This based on true story movie was able to gained many awards and high ratings. Yet, this movie has also become the subject of some criticisms.