Amien, Matori to lead team on Habibie's speech

JAKARTA (JP): Amien Rais, the speaker of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), said on Friday that he and Deputy Speaker Matori Abdul Djalil would lead the Assembly commission entrusted to evaluate President B.J. Habibie's accountability speech.

"Matori and I have been entrusted by the Assembly to lead the MPR commission to deliberate the President's accountability," he said when receiving a 15-member delegation of the Alumni Association of the Bandung Institute of Technology on Friday.

The delegation lodged a petition with Amien, demanding the Assembly to not elect Habibie in the Oct. 20 presidential election.

It also urged the Assembly to pay serious attention to criticisms sparked by the accountability speech.

A delegation of the August 17 University, which met with Amien on Friday, also demanded the Assembly not support Habibie.

Amien said his commission would deliberate the accountability speech before it is brought to a plenary Assembly meeting.

When asked his response to the criticism against the accountability speech, Amien pledged to accommodate the various public response and evaluate it seriously in the commission. When asked for his personal comment on it, Amien conceded that the speech was full of rhetoric.

"I'm surprised that in all the paragraphs in the speech, there was no statement that he (Habibie) ever made a mistake or he felt bad about anything. It is very strange. The most ironic thing is that he said he had worked hard to investigate the alleged corruption committed by former president Soeharto and his cronies but he did not realize that he was one of Soeharto's cronies," he said, citing that in certain fields, Habibie's government was really a continuation of the former New Order regime.

Amien gave signals that the Assembly might turn down Habibie's accountability speech if the public protests continue.

"There's a possibility the Assembly will reject the controversial speech, depending on the commission's evaluation and reaction from people," he said.

"Habibie's chance to win the presidential election will drop to the lowest level if the accountability speech is turned down. But this does not mean that the Golkar Party is barred from nominating him. Despite a possible rejection of the speech, Golkar has a right to determine whether to nominate him.

"To me, the problem is will Golkar go ahead with Habibie's nomination if the accountability speech is rejected by the Assembly. All this will depend on Golkar itself," he said. (rms/05)