Should NGO Activist Involves Their Self Directly In Politic? ~ Nanang Public Area

15 November 2008

Should NGO Activist Involves Their Self Directly In Politic?

Should NGO Activist Involves Their Self Directly In Politic?It is debatable question whether NGO activist should involves directly in politic domain. In Indonesia, NGO activist who come across into politic is still being an interesting topic for among NGO activist. Globally, there is no rigid norm to prevent this phenomenon, but commonly, is it unacceptable when NGO activist became a politician since domain area for NGO and Politic extremely different. Different area mean different system, interest, value, interest and motivation in development.

Based on Arito and Cohen: market, civil society and state are have different domain and different function. This separation called as the triangle sector. NGO is entity in civil society domain area and politic is in state domain area, as such they have to be acted by different actor. Those three sector must keep their role in check and balance each other.

Back to Indonesia context, NGO or civil society activist who became a politician is traditional society movement since this country citizen met their nationality passion when colonial age until now. Many founding father of Indonesia ware civil society activist. This fact encourages today NGO activist have political motivation in their existence in NGO. When they are feel have enough experience to be a politician or feel boring in NGO, they will across to politic activity. But, it is recognize that not all of NGO activist have this motivation and keep their commitment to fighting for marginalized people purely, but in my observation, they are only in less number.

Somehow, they believe that became a politician is fighting for social justice through political way is not differs than when they struggle in NGO. In common perception, this fact is motivated by perception that became an NGO activist is not good for our live in the future, there is no enough need for living will you get when you dedicated your live and working for NGO throughout your life. That is true since the salary for NGO (especially for local NGO) is not as much as politician or businessman salary. But, none honest about this.

I myself disagree if the NGO activist become a politician, but that not mean I do not recognize their political rights as a democratic country citizen. I prefer to consist to be a NGO activist/worker/employee than across to other domains, market or state, that have different values, system, way, interest, and motivation in build a nation.

This post has 1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good opinion.

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