Agenda of reform

One day in a far away fabled land, a grandchild asked his grandfather the meaning of the word parliament. The old man, who was a retired member of the land's parliament, told his grandchild thoughtfully that the word was derived from two French verbs: parler to speak or talk, and mentir, to lie or tell a lie. The young boy uttered a sigh of incredulity and in a tone of disappointment concluded hastily that his grandpa also used to tell lies in parliament. "No", said the old man assuring his grandchild, "never, because I never talked during sessions. Sometimes I pretended to listen to the speeches, but usually I dozed off".

It is hoped that the general election held on June 7, 1999, will send to the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), people's representatives who will honestly work for a realization of the reformists' goals, notably the creation of good governance.

The first agenda would be the formation of a clean and strong government totally committed to the eradication of corruption and its ilk, total redress of injustices (including compensation to the wronged) and relentless prosecution of criminal acts and abuse of power. Herculean effort is therefore urgently needed to cleanse the Augean stables of the dirt and filth inherited from the past.

Western observers, including former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, have expressed satisfaction with the elections. They have seemingly been impressed by an orderly and peaceful election processes in the field. In other words the polling they witnessed met four criteria, being direct, universal, free and secret. Irregularities such as forged ballots and prevoting perforation of ballots were, after all, insignificant in comparison to the organization of the elections in general.

They seem to have lowered the high standards of just and fair elections which they apply to developing countries. They seem to have deeper reasons for their satisfaction -- the big five are all World Bank and International Monetary Fund friendly.

They apparently were not concerned with the whole system of the elections. There are definite flaws in the system. The recent elections could be likened to a race where a couple of political parties started long before the whistle was blown. And one of these privileged few controlled the government apparatus for three decades throughout the country, as a well-established organization with solid financial sources. In contrast, the majority of political parties -- many of them with nondescript programs -- were established in haste. Their members work extraordinarily hard with meager means; hence their recently reported tantrums.

Besides, the voting system produced bizarre results in some provinces. Political parties with a small number of votes have gained more seats than parties with a greater percentage of the vote. This system is simply neither just nor fair, and should not have been adopted. Millions of votes have been cast for nothing, and billions of rupiah -- doled out by or borrowed from foreign agencies perhaps -- worth of ballot papers have turned into garbage.

Furthermore, there is the "accord on votes". This combines the otherwise useless remainder of votes from two or more political parties so as to produce a greater number of votes needed to win one or more seats for one of the political parties involved in the agreement. This is an unethical act, unless the parties involved have obtained prior permission from their constituents or put this political expedient in their programs previously distributed.

Indeed, in politics, compromise could be a virtue. In law and morality, compromise would mean no less than the betrayal of reform.

SOEGIO SOSROSOEMARTO

Jakarta