Pancasila's Philosophical Foundation Of Indonesia

Pancasila. It is the Indonesia’s philosophical foundation. The term of “Pancasila” etymologically is derived from two old Javanese words (originally from Sanskrit): panca meaning five, and sila meaning principles. It encompasses five principles considered to be inseparable and interrelated. First is belief in the one and only God. Second is just and civilised humanity. Third is the unity of Indonesia. Fourth is democracy guided by the inner wisdom in the unanimity arising out of deliberations amongst representatives. Fifth is social justice for all the people of Indonesia. These five principles denote to the existence of monotheism, humanism, nationalism, deliberation and social justice. This foundation has been written obviously in the preamble
After the independence primarily during the Old Order regime, some ideologies are leading: nationalism, Islam and communism while socialism is abandoned. That’s why Soekarno under his Guided Democracy regime called those leading ideologies into one term, Nasakom (nationalism, religion, communism), to unify Indonesian politics at the time. Nevertheless, during the New Order regime, the politics of aliran (literally ‘streams’) was muted and accommodated into only two mainstream ideologies: nationalism and Islam while communism was buried deeply. In post-New Order regime, hundreds political parties were emerging surrounding 1999, nevertheless, merely forty-eight parties which were allowed to participate in the election. The number of political parties has been reducing in the following elections due to the political and election system. The ideology which adopted by them is not so far from the spectrum between secularism on the one hand and Islamism on the other hand, even some of them attempt to combine these two
Nevertheless, these ideologies are supporting and friendly to the values of nationalism: Pancasila. This study attempts to formulate that political ideology in contemporary Indonesia can be divided into three major forces: the nationalist-secular group, the nationalist-Muslim group and the nationalist-Islamist group. The former is on the one spectrum and the latter is on the other spectrum. Meanwhile, there is a middle group which tries to incorporate both ideologies in their platform and actions as a moderate path. For obvious accounts related to these three political ideology groups will be addressed