SOEs should put the people’s sovereignty and welfare above all else. People’s sovereignty takes precedence over business sovereignty. The interests and welfare of the people are above market calculations. Therefore, sectors that concern the livelihood of many people – land, water and natural resources – must be managed by the state through SOEs. They must not be privately owned or managed. SOEs must be firm. There must be no privatization in SOEs from downstream to upstream, especially in sectors related to many people’s livelihoods. This should be SOEs’ urgent mission and concern.
I remembered the lecturers at the London School of Economics (LSE). They said that when discussing policies and programs, in the end, you have to measure the extent to which the policies or programs you make are useful for many people. That should be the benchmark: the ultimate benefit for the people. LSE, through its academics – Anthony Giddens might be the most well-known – advocates for “The Third Way”, which is an alternative way of thinking outside the dichotomy of capitalism and socialism.
Many of the world’s greatest minds, Nobel laureates and heads of government become in-house or visiting professors at LSE, which makes it one of the most world-recognized campuses for the subject of “political economy”.
They concluded that all the complications of the state system must be measured by the extent to which it can benefit its people.
SOEs resemble what the LSE academics said. The middle way should be an economy in which the vital sectors are managed by the state, as a bridge between capitalism and socialism.
Our country’s economic system is, in fact, far more advanced than what those world’s economists proposed. Indonesia’s founding fathers had astutely thought of the most fitting economic system for Indonesia, which they articulated in Article 33 of the 1945 Constitution.
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In its implementation, an SOE is a business that can manifest Indonesia’s style of social democracy, which includes a social, political and national economic concept that can support realizing justice for all Indonesian people.
With the current conditions of our SOEs, now is the time for a revamp. How do we make SOEs the backbone for realizing Article 33 of the Constitution? What is the ideal SOE governance? Would it be better for SOEs not to be managed by a ministry (the SOE Ministry) but by a super holding? But if there is a super holding, are the companies under it, the holdings, sub holdings and the rest ready to follow? Even if the SOE Ministry is disbanded, as advised by many experts, will the ministry be considered business as usual? Where will we place the role of this ministry as an institution that should be able to ensure that sectors affecting the lives of many are controlled by the state?