The Civil Society Coalition for Women and Children in Surakarta (Komansipera) - a civil society organisation in Surakarta – organised a discussion at Anawin Hall, Yayasan Yaphi Surakarta, on Wednesday 04/09/2024.
The discussion started with an introduction of participating organisations, their work and issues they are dealing with in communities, and their work areas, followed by presentations by resoutrce people.
One resource person, Mahmudi started his presentation about stories told by people accompanying communities regarding prevalent and extreme poverty in Solo, and victims who could not find justice. He said that in a goog and effective nation, there would be power that urged the nation to be good. That power is civil society.
The State and civil society have complect yet dynamic relationship, and it is worth examining where the State and civil society stand, so that we understand the nature of power and its basic characteristics.
Pamitkasih, a disability activist and gender equality, disability and social inclusion (GEDSI) instructor said that disability-related civil society had significant successes with regards to education and ideology transmission that there was no clashes between people with disability. This happened not only amongst people with disability but also amongst peasants.
State-civil society relationship may turn confrontational – when the State is not effective whiule the civil society is strong. One example relates to policy making which is confrontational, where weak communities fail to provide inputs on policies, meaning there is no meaningful participation. The policy can be confrontation when a counter-policy (alternative policy) is proposed.
Such confrontational relationship is visible in movement targeting draft Law on Local Election, that features both collaborative and confrontational patterns, and alternative pattern (State accepts some part and refuse other parts).
It is the State’s obligation to do the Activities that have done by communities and organisations – i.e. education, administration, social inovation – and it is the participatory and collaborative patterns that are dominant in Indonesia.
The State may have been thinking right but it becomes formality when money and projects are involved. One example is the the Alert Village where communities and villages manages community affairs, leading villages to become self-reliant and independent villages without discrimination.
The District administrator then heard about Alert Village as the villages presented their activities, and the former adopted for its own purpose – political gains to make the district administrator’s name popular.
Civil society may be strong or weak. A strong civil society is able to self-organise and fights for its own interests. A weak civil society is passive, and unable to self-organise or fight for its own interests.
Civil society organisations (CSOs) do not represent civil societies. Rather, they are organisations – hence there is a distinction (a gap) between civil societies and civil society organisations that may create problems. In the meantime, a changing paradign lansdcape has taken place between the New Order era and the era of political reform.
In New Order era, professionals were actively self-organising into groups or organisations that featured close physical relationship, the presence of leaders and organisations and legal standing. The last one – legal standing – was enforced by the New Order regime as a means for control.
In the political reform era, civil society organisations emerged through ideas, not necessarily with leaders, and with indirect forms of communication (digital). CSOs became less effective nor strategic. Today’s CSOs are not strong, hence there is a need for re-examination in order to find suitable strategy.
Internationally, there is a civil sosiety index – i.e. freedom of civil society, governance functions and principles, political culture, values and ethical norms.
The most effective weapon against the government is civil society control on taxes, for example. As in Germany, civil society is suspicious of the State’s use of taxes, and they can propose independent audit to the State.
The year of 2001 is the year of renewable energy – biogas – in Vietnam. They learned from Indonesia, but when they presented in China, Vietnam had more biogas than Indonesia. Vietnam biogas expansion happened through collaboration between government and civil societies (peasants). In 1996, Vietnam was unable to grow its own rice, then they learned in Indonesia. In 2004, Vietnam imported rice to Indonesia, and it became a pilot for participatory and collaborative work. Indonesia, for its part, needs to look at the level of family welfare and capacity in order to inspire families to become prosperous.
Civil societies play critical roles in democracy – control on policy, participation of civil societies, advocacu, independent conflict resolution, inovation and creativity, and capacity building.
Civil societies has made limited impacts through advocacy, yet it expected to make significant impacts on policy.
The problem is that civil societies do not have data, and if they do, they could not read the data. Data is essential to fights against the government, but the data should be complete and valid.
Civil society conducts advocacy for public policies in order to protect the public’s interests, its participation in politics, and in collaborative dialogues and discussions.
Civil societies have their own challenges – changes in policies that limit CSOs’ movement, difficulty in accessing resources (such as for education) and in mastering technology. Civil societies also face strong oligarchy, where in Indonesia it is not just the elites but also rich people control the power. Henec it is not mere oligarchy but also autocracy. Then, there is convergence where oligarchy and autocracy become united. This convergence makes civil societies weak.
It is tough to be a civil society in the modern age to have a political control, to access justice, because ther are so many ‘barters’ in policies, making control so difficult.
Controversial State policies – i.e. the Job Creation Act – weaken cisil societies while at the same time increase investment with little regards to community in general. Other policies – such as COVID policies, forestry policies, economic analysis, value-added tax policies (on cigarettes), and increase university fees are also key challenges.
The most critical policy analysis therefore would be whether public policies will strengthen or weaken CSOs.
Effects of Climate Change
Climate change had impacts on women and children – high temperature (leading to uncontrolled gene mutation), food crisis, water crisis (drying Amazon River, leading to forestry conflict), with most major rivers experiencing drastic reduction in water level and led to migration and conflict (South Asia – China constructed 11 dams and other Asian countries would experience drought, Afrika as well).
Children must abandon schools to help parents earn an income, face the prospect of increased prices (and weakening purchasing power), with 50% of the world population facing depression, massive job termination in animal feed industry, and shortage in raw materials for import, and gender perspective. There was a need to integrate gender perspective and climate change.
Relevant protection measures such as education, building awareness (workshop with women to make use of land, changing villages into productive enterprises), economic empowerement, climate-resistence infrastructure (high accessibility), natural engineering and social engineering/inovation (to reduce stress amongst women and children).
One problem with civil society roles in Indonesia was in its relations with the limitations, money politics corruption, and relations between the State and civil socities.
Ida from Komasipera responded that what Mahmudi explained was not all there was implemented in Solo City. She explained that many members of Komasipera were not active. Ida also reflected on how to unite ideas and strategies from different consciences, so that could be a uniting force in communities able to change perception of independence and attention. She also reflected on the forms or ways of community coordination, that would feature differences and unite them into an overall CSO framework.
Haryati Panca Putri also mentioned another issue – with regards to policy formulation by stakeholders that saw NGOs and CSOs as accessories. Together with civil socities, NGOs and CSOs questioned the academic draft as initial step for policy formulation by using literature data, making policies unresponsive to real-life situation because they were not based on real-life data.
The problem was that the government did not respond to NGOs’ and CSOs’ inputs and policies were made as projects to use up money. Involvement of NGOs and CSOs was only limited, with invitation given on the day so it was not possible to prepare critical reviews.
The next question was how many policies on women and children rights in relations to climate change were only targets of discussion without meaningful participation. Then, how was one supposed to change the paradigm even with a new government.
Mahmudi provided an example about how bad the health system was. He said that in 2000s, he attended a training in Cuba and git interested with the system in Cuba, where sick people could stay at home while doctors and ambulance arrived. People other than the doctors were not allowed to touch sick people. There was also Education police in Cuba, where they visited sick students during school hours, and if a child did attend school (and helped parents earn an income instead), the education police would conduct an assessment and offered recommendation about what needed to be done. Germany also had banking system to deal with business credit. This became a solution to ‘humanise’ people.
In the past, Indonersia used monarchy system that was not friendly to the people. When it became Indonesia, it was re-adopted and community once again became a symbol and not fully ‘humanised.’ The ruler thought that Indonesia only nbelonged to one ruler.
Mahmudi explained about participation. True and genuine participation must deal with policies and aim for a distribution of power between the State and civil societies.
If manipulative participation happened, then communities woulf fight fgor community interests.
For successful civil societies fights to deconstruct policies, there was critical need for forums for capacity building (people knowledge common), where knowledge did not come from the State.
Mahmudi said that fifteen years ago, he fought by using micro-economy approach, in the absence of trust in economic development. Therw would always be market dominance regardless of income. Micro economy analysis looked at household expenses, and saw whether communities were affected by the market or not. Household expence analysis led to problem analysis that could be used to deal with the bureaucracy, and to increase awareness quickly.
Village analysis mapping by Mahmudi showed that household expenditure may exceed one billion in one village. That finding neccecitated reflection to map ot community capacity for local economic improvement/development.
Structural poverty led to collective awareness. Empowerment happened in seven villages where Mahmudi worked – doing joint research and investigation by engaging local human resources in the villages.
Although resisting without being confrontational, research and data and the visualisation were indisputable and became powerful evidence,
Vera responded that there was a need for further discussion and reflection because this discussion did not lead to any conclusion. She reiterated that CSOs are a necessity as they could nbot rely on the authority characterised by oligarchy and convergence.
Haryati Panca Putri closed the discussion and explained that civil societies must return to their own ‘space’ and become strong actors. She re-itiretated that civils societies did not need to rely in the State but had to rely on their own capacity and resources. (Renny Talitha/ Ast)
