ABRI gets seats in the House

JAKARTA (JP): New legislation for the June general election was finally agreed to on Wednesday and will be enacted at the plenary session of the House of Representatives (DPR) on Thursday.

The breakthrough came after the four factions agreed to restrict the Armed Forces (ABRI) to 38 unelected seats in the new 500-member DPR.

The Armed Forces currently receive 75 unelected seats in the DPR.

During the long-running debate, the United Development Party (PPP) faction fought to limit the military to 15 seats, a stance strongly opposed by the ABRI and Golkar factions.

A second major hurdle to the enactment of the political bills was removed on Wednesday when faction leaders agreed to conduct the June 7 election at the provincial level, instead of at a regency level, as the majority Golkar faction desired.

Faction leaders attending a closed lobbying session held to break up the impasse over the two issues denied the agreement had resulted from "political horse trading" among them.

"No parties win or lose. It's the nation that wins," said Golkar Chairman Akbar Tandjung, who is also the minister/state secretary, after emerging from the closed door session.

PPP House faction chairman Zarkasih Nur later told a news conference that his party "had done its best" given the limited leeway it had to work in. He said the two issues "are tied in a package".

Zarkasih said that ABRI would have backed Golkar's demand for a vote on the issues if it had pressed ahead with its agenda. He pointed out that the PPP and the United Development Party (PDI) could not hope to win a vote against the two powerful factions.

"So rather than losing on two fronts, PPP agreed to the motion (on military seats)," he said.

Zarkasih said the party was basically "dissatisfied" with the results, but conceded that they must accept the decision.

ABRI Commander Gen. Wiranto appeared relieved by the decision.

"It (the new seat allocation) is a drastic cut," he told journalists after the lobbying session.

Wiranto, who is also the minister of defense and security, said 38 was the minimum number of seats with which the military felt it needed to function effectively in the legislature.

Wednesday's agreement demonstrated the military's strong political clout in the country's politics. One day earlier, ABRI's Chief of Territorial Affairs Lt. Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono went on the record to say that 38 was the minimum number of seats the military required.

The military also agreed to accept a sharp cut in the number of seats it is awarded in the country's provincial and regency level legislatures to 10 percent of the seats in each assembly.

Minister of Home Affairs Syarwan Hamid, his secretary-general Feisal Tamin, government expert, Ryaas Rasyid, who is also director general for regional autonomy, PPP Chairman Hamzah Haz, Golkar executives Slamet Effendy Yusuf and Aminullah Ibrahim, and the ABRI House faction leaders Hari Sabarno, Achmad Rustandi and Budi Harsono also attended Wednesday's lobbying session, which was a continuation of a marathon session which ran from Tuesday into the early hours of Wednesday morning.

The PDI was represented by Secretary-General Buttu Hutapea and Y.B. Wiyanjono. House Special Committee chairman Abu Hasan Sazili was also present.

Legislators agreed at a later session of the special committee to work overtime on Wednesday to make the Jan. 28 deadline, the time it had been allotted to endorse the political bills.

Electoral district

Commenting on the consensus that the polling and ballot counting would be conducted at the provincial level, PPP faction chairman Zarkasih and Wiyanjono of the PDI -- who's parties both fought for that system -- said they were satisfied.

The outcome is unlike the proportional representation voting system proposed by Golkar, whereby the voting was to be conducted at the regency level, but the agreement was sort of a combination of the two systems, as Wiyanjono described it.

"District aspirations" were addressed in the agreed voting system, he said.

Unlike the present voting system in which a political party's central board in Jakarta has the ultimate power to determine its legislative candidates, the new laws will require candidates to be endorsed by the party at regency level.

In the past, candidates were often unknown in their assigned constituency.

The seats for each party will be determined by the number of votes gained at the provincial level, but the candidates can only become House members if their party wins in the regency where they were nominated.

Residual votes will be distributed at the provincial level for the remaining seats, and then the party's central leaders can determine who will take these seats.

To ensure a balance of representations between the islands of Java and Bali -- where over 60 percent of the country's population lives -- and the outer islands, the factions also agreed "in principle", that each regency will have a minimum of one representative. (aan)