UNAIR NEWS – For the first time, Book Series Club (KSB) reviewed a book titled “Deliberative Democracy Discourse in Indonesia” by an author from Surabaya Fahrul Muzaqqi on Friday, Feb. 22 at Omah Jaman Now.
KSB is a literacy community in Surabaya established in 2018. This community was born from the initiative of several young people, mostly UNAIR students, who were reluctant to see the rigid Surabaya literacy limited to formal education classrooms.
The event also invited Fahrul Muzaqqi as the author and Ervan Kus Indarto as a book reviewer. Fahrul Muzaqqi himself is an alumni of FISIP UNAIR who is also a political science lecturer in UNAIR.
He claimed to get the idea of deliberative democracy based on observations from many literature. Deliberative democracy is also widely applied in various countries, and deliberative democracy emerged in the tradition of modern democracy.
According to him, deliberative democracy is an offer of procedural mechanisms in the management of the state.
“This book tries to examine the origin of deliberative democracy in the tradition of modern democracy, while contextualizing it with the history of Indonesian democracy,” continued Fahrul Muzaqqi.
He also said that deliberative democracy seeks to form a true democracy by activating public space as a place of dialogue between government and the community.
Communication between the government and the community is one of the important features of the running power. The government that stops communicating with the community will face a revolution. If the community does not want to talk with the government, then the government cannot fulfill their needs.
The book published by Airlangga University Press (AUP) wants to show that the emergence of development planning discussion (musrenbang) and free stage is concrete implementation of deliberative democracy in Indonesia.
“But the problem is in practice, deliberative democracy often clashes with the practice of elitism produced by representative democracy generally applied today,” said Fahrul Muzaqqi.
In the end, KSB’s coordinator Agung Hari Baskoro said that KSB would consistently hold similar events every month with various topics based on popular issues.
“Building a literacy culture can not only be done through a single event but must be held continuously by all parties,” said Agung Hari Baskoro . (*)
Author: Tunjung Senja Widuri
Editor: Binti Q. Masruroh
