A lesson for a multiparty system

Kompas of May 30 carried a thought-inspiring caricature depicting a bunch of hilarious, merciless-looking men who raise posters identifying their respective political parties, while others hold up still blank posters. A trampled, injured man in rags lies dying on the ground, personifying the battered national economy. In a corner, a modest image of a common man displaying a poster signals the Sembako Party. Sembako is an acronym for the nine basic commodities.

The striking satirical message elicited by the caricature reflects first the escalating breakaway of certain groupings from some existing political parties, other than the justifiable moves of former repressed opposition leaders to set up new political parties.

Second, the image of the dying man and the innocent common man wielding the Sembako Party sign fitly depicts the callous disregard on the part of the political movements of vested interest groups vis-a-vis the poor economic state of the country and the people's suffering in the current economic crisis.

In my view, the caricature should serve as a reminder that the existence of a multitude of political parties, with rampant, incessant antagonism raging between them, as prevailed in the 1950s, did not provide political stability, nor economic development, to the country and people. Cabinets survived less than a year.

It resembled the political instability in France which held sway in the 1950s in the pre-De Gaulle era.

A university professor of constitutional law in a talk show on SCTV on Sunday evening (May 31) stated that in the 1950s no antagonism existed between political parties in the matter of their programs.

But it must be recalled that the antagonism between the parties in 1958 reached such a stage as to end up in a stalemate of the Provisional People's Consultative Assembly, which undertook to lay down a new constitution. This stalemate angered president Sukarno, who at that time went on record with the warning "I will bury the political parties". He finally revived the 1945 Constitution.

The antagonism between the political parties which caused the failure of the Assembly in 1958 must serve as a lesson for retrospection and introspection to the leaders who are intent on founding new political parties and accordingly participating in the coming general election.

S. SUHAEDI

Jakarta