A leader has the role to lead his subordinates in order to reach the vision that they have aimed for. In Indonesia, however, leadership crisis has affected many organisations, including government agencies. Many government leaders are proved to have committed corruption or fought for power. Edelman Trust Barometer 2016 survey on public trust showed a decrease of trust among Indonesians of their government, down by 7 point to 58%.
“Such behaviour of leaders have brought distrust among Indonesian people,” said Abdullah Arif, UGM Philosophy student, on Thursday (16/6).
Concerned with this, Arif and Hendrik Kurniawan Wibowo (Philosophy), Shinta Mudrikah and Ayu Wijayanti (Cultural Sciences), and Muhammad Arridho Rifaldo (Economics and Business) joining Student Creativity Programme for Research have focused on the search for noble values of leaders from Tengger community in Ngadisari, East Java, that can be implemented for Indonesian leadership system.
Supervised by Reno Wikandaru, S.Fil, M.Fil., they researced into the rasaning manunggal value that becomes the basic leadership idea of the Tengger community. Rasaning manunggal is the main essence to build balance and harmony among the Tengger to be peaceful and harmonious. The rasaning manunggal cannot be simply interpreted as to be united between human beings, but also with the universe, and God.
“We try to interpret the rasaning manunggal value into those that are easy to understand by the Indonesian people. This value cannot be separated from the importance of spirituality in our daily lives. As such, this will not oppose the first principle of Pancasila, which is Belief in One God,” Arif said.
Care for future generations, responsibility, idea on harmony, and ancestral inheritance are the ethics of the rasaning manunggal value. These characters can be adopted to the Indonesian government as it is sustainable, which covers HRD and natural resource. These characters also require strong spirituality from leaders, because the basic values of faiths are to regulate humans to be peaceful and maintain the integrity between humans themselves.