Merayakan Kebebasan Beragama - Democracy Project

Democracy Projectlistening but seldom speaks. Even on a one-to-one basis, as many ofhis friends testify in this volume, he has to be drawn out on issuebefore one can discover his opinion. It is up to his friends to takethe initiative to draw him out, as he is unlikely to verbalize histhoughts without direct invitation. Moreover, he is absolutely not apublic speaker. He is clearly much more comfortable speaking oneto-onethan he is addressing a broad audience.And yet, speeches written by Djohan have been heard by 10s ofmillions of people at a time as they are broadcast over the nationaltelevision and radio networks. As one of President Soeharto’s twomain speechwriters during the 1980s and early 1990s Djohan wrotehundreds of speeches for the President. Some of these were neverdelivered because the President disagreed with their content. Thiswas Djohan’s deliberate intent, preferring to write honestly and tofollow his conscience he chose to speak consistently rather thanconstantly self-censor. Although his meek demeanor gives littleindication of great courage or boldness he was nevertheless morethan willing to put on paper thoughts that might edify and informthe President even as they were meeting with his disapproval. Djohanwas used heavily by Soeharto because of his remarkable skill incrafting words for public speaking, despite his own reluctance tospeak publicly. One can imagine that the President was also attractedto his intellectual honesty, recognizing that the sentences and ideasthat he crafted for him were of great substance and quality. Despiteregularly penning speeches which he knew the President woulddisagree with and not deliver Djohan enjoyed considerable success inputting words into the President’s mouth that Soeharto himselfwould never have thought of uttering. In this way Djohan not onlygave clarity to the ‘thoughts’ of the famously taciturn president butalso effectively shaped the policy position of his government. Thereare a number of examples given in this volume of how Djohan’swords locked in a particular policy approach that the administrationwas later bound to follow. This is particularly evident in mattershaving to do with religion in public life and tolerance and respectbetween communities.If this were Djohan’s only contribution as a public intellectual hewould still rank as one of the more influential and significant writersof his period. After all, very few could discern what Soeharto was752 |MERAYAKAN KEBEBASAN BERAGAMA