Indonesias political maturity is part of the countrys ongoing nation-building process.

Many political issues such as a plan to build a Rp1.13 trillion (US$130 million). House of Representatives office tower, a controversy over independent presidential candidates and corrupt practices in local governments, have sparked public debates. But the way politicians responded to public criticism as in the case of the new House building appears to confirm a hypothesis that in the eyes of the elite, people lack political education. In a nutshell, in term of political education, there is a disparity between the elite and the people. In a normative framework, the need for political education can be found in Law No. 2/2011 on Political Parties. Article 1 (4) of the law states that political education is a learning and comprehension process concerning the rights, duties and responsibilities of every citizen in the state and national life. Further, the law regulates that political education shall be acknowledged in the statutes of each political party. In addition, Article 34 of the law stipulates that financial assistance from the state shall be used (by political parties) to educate political party members and the public about politics. This political education shall cover Indonesias four founding pillars: Pancasila state ideology, the 1945 Constitution, Bhineka Tunggal Ika (unity in diversity) and the Unitary Republic of Indonesia, as well as the rights and obligations of citizens and the sustainable regeneration of party members. Nonetheless, its not easy to implement such a formulation as it lacks details,. The law does not say anything about substantial materials concerning political education, for instance the mechanism to educate people and its curriculum. In my opinion, this is perhaps the reason why political arties are reluctant to arrange political education for the people. Due to a loophole in the political party law, a human rights approach may be effective to overcome the challenge to providing political education to the people. To this point, we could draw several connections between political education and human rights: Political education is to be addressed as a means to exercise the right of self determination; right to opinion; right to participate in public services and lastly the right to education. I would mainly focus on the first three. The right to self-determination stretches from political status to natural resource exploitation. In order to enable ones right to determine his or her political status, every individual ought to enjoy available, accessible and acceptable political education. The same applies if we regard political education as part of the right to participate in public affairs. Based on human rights interpretation, there are at least three important

aspects in this right as stated by the Human Rights Committee: (i) the conduct of public affairs is a broad concept which relates to the exercise of political power, in particular the exercise of legislative ,executive and administrative power; (ii)citizens also take part in the conduct of public affairs by exerting influence through public debate and dialogue with their representatives or through their capacity to organize themselves; and (iii) the right to freedom of association, including the right to form and join organizations and association concerned with political and public affairs, is an essential adjunct to the right. The committee furthers its interpretation by stating that political parties and membership in parties play a significant role in the conduct of public affairs. On the other side, the state should ensure that, in their internal management, political parties respect the right to participate in public affairs in order to enable citizens to exercise their rights. Thus, legally speaking, the role of a political party has been transformed to a duty bearer in terms of human rights fulfillment because parties shall educate people politically. By giving political education a place in human rights discourse, people thus may consider this as a part of their rights and become politically conscious. This is important in order to create for instance rational voters during a general election. Furthermore, it would also be important for the political parties to enhance their vision in viewing political education as a form of public service, not merely a method to woo support and votes. As a consequence, political parties become a duty bearer to develop human rights. Finally, the state may commence to consider an idea to promote the right to political education as part of civil and political rights. The slogan vox populi vox dei alone may not be able to resolve the shortage of political education among citizens. It has to be transformed into a claim right. By doing this, the gap between the elite and the people can be diminished and a synergy would occur between the political parties legal duty to serve political education and peoples right to be politically educated.