The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

by Vincent Bevins

But in 1959, as Benny was finishing his undergraduate studies, the nature of Indonesian democracy changed: it took a big step backward. A few months after the regional rebellions backed by the CIA were defeated, Sukarno declared that the country would be moving to a system he had been discussing for a few years called “Guided Democracy.” As he put it, the system was a national response to the weakness of liberal democracy. Liberalism and party democracy, he complained, were a Western import that pitted everyone against each other, forcing each person to fight for their own selfish interests. That was not the Indonesian way, he claimed.2 He wanted a decision-making process based on the traditional village assembly, in which everyone got together and chose a course of action after careful consideration. Every party would be represented in the cabinet—called a gotong royong cabinet, after the traditional village practice of doing collective work—and there would be a “National Council” representing civil groups like workers, peasants, intellectuals, religious groups, and entrepreneurs. The idea was that minority considerations could never be excluded.