POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND VIOLENT BEHAVIOUR IN INDONESIA

Since Indonesian people has entered the 1998 reformation era, public involvement has been encouraged to actively participate in national development, including political development. As an activity in political field, political participation is differentiated into active and passive participation. The political participation involve initiatives to propose public policy, criticism and improvement on policy correction, to pay tax, and to choose government leaders. The passive participation includes activities to comply with the goverment, to accept and to implement any governmental decisions. In addition to both types of political participation, several groups of community members have been excluded from both active and passive political participation as well; and they refer themselves as the apathetic group or golongan putih/golput (white group/abstentation). In their political participation, some citizens have been found to commit violent behavior. Violent behavior is an action that individual or group attempts to influence government's decision by committing physical both on human being and materials. Various concept related to violent behavior in Indonesia has been frequently considered as the New Order's heritage and the weak control of the state during the reformation period. The effectiveness of political education in Indonesia, therefore, should be encouraged to make citizens are able to improve their political participation that is consistent with Pancasila (Five Principle) as the nation's soul and personality bangsa Pancasila