Amien Rais reelected PAN chairman

Amien Rais reelected PAN chairman

By Sri Wahyuni and Asip Agus Hasani

YOGYAKARTA (JP): The expectations spoke for themselves when
Amien Rais remained virtually unchallenged in his bid to retain
the National Mandate Party chairmanship on Sunday.

Amien won 584 of the 786 votes cast in the election that
marked the final day of the party's first congress. Outgoing
secretary-general Faisal Basri earned 124 votes, while the other
candidate qualifying for the race, A.M. Fatwa, took 77.

Only one ballot was declared invalid, because it named two
candidates.

Originally, five candidates qualified for the election, but
Abdillah Toha and Hatta Rajasa threw in the towel, saying they
realized they had only a remote chance of beating Amien.

"Amien is like Mike Tyson for me. I would have certainly
lost," Abdillah said, referring to the former undisputed world
heavyweight boxing champion.

In a late night session, the congress participants elected
four members of the party's central board of executives to be in
the Amien-led team assigned to select the party's new executives:
Faisal, Fatwa, Hatta Rajasa and Patrialis Akbar. Other members of
the board are Yogyakarta chairman A.R. Iskandar and his East Java
and South Sulawesi counterparts Suwardi and M. Askin.

Faisal said he would decline a second term as secretary-
general, citing personal reasons.

"I reject my candidacy (for the secretary-general post), not
because I was against any changes to the party's founding
platform, but because I have to honor my commitment to hold a
position only once," Faisal said.

"I need a new challenge."

Faisal's withdrawal paved the way for Hatta to take the team's
key post.

Amien said after his election that this would be his last
term, which will last until 2005.

"I hope there will be a young cadre, who is better than me, to
take the top job in 2005. One of my concerns is how to generate
brilliant party cadres, mainly because the party is very young,"
Amien said.

The voting, which lasted three hours, went smoothly, but many
of the voters vacated the convention room during ballot-counting.
Some of them were seen packing their bags or enjoying an
entertainment performance near the swimming pool in the Mustika
Sheraton Hotel, which hosted the four-day congress.

Asked about Amien's reelection, Faisal said he accepted
whatever the congress decided and would support the party's
efforts to win the most votes in the 2004 general election.

"Pak Amien received a very significant mandate from the
congress, but personally I asked him to also struggle for what my
friends and I envisioned for PAN," he said.

Bara Hasibuan, a close associate of Faisal, however, said that
having collected 124 votes, Faisal deserved a key position as one
of the party's deputy chairmen.

Faisal said he was surprised by his vote earning. Prior to the
congress he predicted he would only win up to 10 percent of the
vote.

"It was indeed beyond my expectations," he said.

He presumed his support came mostly from young constituents,
especially those who shared his progressive way of thinking.

"But I hope they won't be too progressive compared to what I
did (in criticizing the party), which seems to me I perhaps went
too far," he said.

Political observer Mahfud M.D. of Yogyakarta's Indonesian
Islamic University said Amien's reelection came as no surprise.

However, he praised the fact that there were no signs of
blocking any candidates from running for the chairmanship.

"We have seen in the past a strong candidate pressing his or
her contenders, who then made an early exit," he said.

Mahfud said Amien's heaviest burden would be how to unite
factions within the party.

"If disputes are not quickly and wisely settled, especially
the one regarding the party's founding principle, the split will
remain," he said.

"I think the solution which meets the conflicting interests is
keeping the founding platform. The ad hoc committee should decide
so as faith and devotion could be applied in the program, not
necessarily in its official platform," he added.

According to Faisal, the most urgent task of the chairman for
the following years is to make the party understand the needs of
its constituents.

"We are intelligent, but intelligence does not guarantee that
we can understand the demands of our constituents," Faisal said.