Guided Democracy Political Power Structure and Foreign Policy (1959-1965) Sample Clauses

Guided Democracy Political Power Structure and Foreign Policy (1959-1965). An assessment of Indonesian foreign policy under President Xxxxxxxx must begin near the end of Parliamentary Democracy and at the start of Guided Democracy, for it is only during this period that Xxxxxxxx commands power over foreign policy. Prior to this period there was Parliamentary Democracy whereby the President of the Republic was simply acting as a national figurehead and actual power of foreign policy making was entrusted to the Prime Minister and his Cabinet of Ministers. During Parliamentary Democracy, political competition occurred within the playing field inside of Parliament as the national agenda was rather the result of a contest of dominance among the various political parties of what would constitute ‘national’ interest. The end of Parliamentary Democracy placed the political playing field outside of Parliament and onto the domestic national stage whereby the players are no longer solely political parties but elements of the political elites. Guided Democracy is the period when the Constitution of 1945 was reinstalled as the basis for governance. According to President Xxxxxxxx, xxx return to the Constitution of 1945 meant a return to the fervor of revolution. And the aspirations of the revolution of August 1945 entailed an Indonesia that is ‘free and eradicated from imperialism, … democratic and free from the remnants of feudalism, … socialist Indonesia, free from capitalism and exploitation de l’homme par l’homme (exploitation of man by man)’ (Xxxxxxxx 1960, 6). Xxxxxxxx (1959, 25) advanced Guided Democracy because he wanted: a government that is stable … a government with authority, that can carry out its duties in a manner that is calm and firm throughout the years, without having each so and so Wednesday or so and so Saturday to fall by the opposition, a government that can work with peace and principle, not for the interest of foreign capital, but to ensure the welfare of the people. Xxxxxxxx’x justification for the transition to Guided Democracy was based on the argument that such a framework for governance was characteristic of all the original democracies of Asia, and that Guided Democracy was ‘special’ in that it was a democracy based on the family without the anarchy of liberalism or the autocracy of dictatorship (Xxxxxxxx 1959, 24). Xxxxxxxx argued that the greatest achievement of the nation until 1959 had been survival, and that from the year 1955 on, priority should have been on investment in human skills and material investme...