YOGYAKARTA – Alumni Association of Gadjah Mada University (Kagama) have conveyed seven academic manifestos to the government to overcome the various problems of the nation. The manifesto was read out in turn by members of the seminar committee who is also Professor of the UGM Faculty of Medicine, Prof. Dr. dr. Sutaryo, Sp.A (K), lecturer of the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Prof. Dr. Ir. Sudaryono, and Coordinator of the Eastern Region of Kagama, Mulyadi Wowor, after the National Seminar of Path to Prosperity: Kagama Contribution for Indonesia in Grha Sabha Pramana on Saturday (18/12).
According to Sutaryo, currently there are seven things that become priorities for Kagama, namely education, culture, politics, economy, technology, food, and law. "Kagama sees them as urgent issues of the nation that need to be cleared and resolved to bring this nation out of problems that have hindered the steps to achieve prosperity," he said.
In education, Sutaryo mentioned that the national education policy should be placed as a national consensus that has long-term capacity in directing national education so that the policy can not easily be altered at any time by the change of regime. "In other words, any regime should consciously be subject to the consensus of national education policy," said Sutaryo.
Aspects of culture in national education are necessary to get a genuine attention, thus the Ministry of National Education should be returned to become the Department of Education and Culture.
The national education with international standards should lead to the development of local uniqueness that has become national wealth, so, international cooperation is established on the principles of dignified equality. National education should provide room for the establishment of dialogue between local culture, national culture, and global culture as basic capitals for national movement as was done by Japan, China, Korea, and Scandinavia countries.
In the field of culture, Sudarsono read out, it is emphasized that the social capital that has grown on local cultural values, religion and other social units should be placed as part of ‘delivery system’. "As for the ‘delivery system’ played by the state and the market, it should not damage or destroy the social capital that had been built by the community, as in the case of BLT (cash aid) and Raskin (rice aid)," he said.
Meanwhile, the practice of democracy should not lead to inappropriate over-spending that spreads evil intentions to practice acts of corruption in the future.
Furthermore, in the field of economics, the national economy should be organized in line with the constitutional order, which makes the Community Economy System (Economic Democracy) as the path to prosperity. Government is responsible to grow local economic stakeholders that are strong in terms of capital, technology, human resources, production management and marketing in global scale, as a base to build national economic independence and remove the dependence on foreign capital.
In the field of technology, the government is urged to make ‘food technology’ including agriculture, animal husbandry, fishery, and forestry, as a focus for national independence development policy as soon as possible.
In the field of food, the government must provide protection for vulnerable groups in getting access to food, such as farmers, agricultural workers, fishermen, women, and children. The government should not let the monopoly in the production and distribution of food by a small group of people. The Government must seriously prevent the conversion of agricultural land into non-agricultural activities on the island of Java, because the island’s rice production contributes about 58 percent of national rice production. "The government should immediately take concrete steps related to the decline in rice yields of around 0.5 ton per hectare that is associated with each Celsius degree increase in temperature due to global warming and climate change," said Mulyadi Wowor.
Finally, in the legal field, Wowor asserted that the intervention of state law for local scale cases should not use the paradigm of power but socio-anthropological context that adopts empathy, compassion, and conscience approaches.