At the time that Indonesia became independent, it had had no history of democratic self-government. Its experience of government was instead that of Dutch rule, which in the final decades approximated a police state, as did Japanese rule after 1942. Fundamental to any functioning democracy are widespread literacy, recognition of the right to oppose government policies, tolerance of different points of view, acceptance of being outvoted, and government protection of those without political power. For understandable reasons, all of those prerequisites were weak in Indonesia.
