Monday, June 02, 2008

Indonesian mobocracy

Mahatma Gandhi once said,
"Democracy is an impossible thing until the power is shared by all, but let not democracy degenerate into mobocracy"
According to The Free Dictionary, the meaning of mobocracy is

mob·oc·ra·cy (mb-kr-s)
n. pl. mob·oc·ra·cies
1. Political control by a mob.
2. The mass of common people as the source of political control.
With so much street demonstrations in Indonesia, could we call the current political system in Indonesia as mobocracy?

You can find so many mobocrats from various political parties, religious group, even students, and undoubtedly the marginalized groups. We understand for the later group, they don't have channel to share their aspirations or problems since the government never hear or listen to them. But how about leaders from political parties, religions, and even the - supposed to be smart - scholars of students?? They should have ability to find better way then mobocracy...

And what is the outcome of this Indonesian mobocracy practices? Well, we can easily seen that in the form of street fights, violence, police arrests, and hundreds of casualties. Who cares?!

1 comment:

Berly said...

Churchill once said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

They can fool some people for some time but not all people for all time