Calls for disbandment of KNPI widespread

JAKARTA (JP): State Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Agung Laksono has been urged to disband the state-sponsored youth organization, KNPI.

Antara reported from Bandarlampung, Lampung, on Thursday that in a discussion in North Lampung, the minister told participants that on all his trips around the country people had made the same demand.

The organization has been widely criticized as being merely one of several political machines of the Golkar political grouping.

In the discussion at a youth center in Kotabumi, 100 kilometers north of Bandarlampung, the regency's KNPI secretary, Muhajirin, asked the minister of KNPI's fate.

Then, three youths who said they were from Muslim groups, including the Muhammadiyah, stated they might be "the first" who would agree to an end of KNPI.

"You wouldn't be the first," Agung replied. "Maybe you're the 1,000th." He went on to describe criticisms raised in his visits and his answers to them.

He said among the critics were those who said KNPI, as a product of the New Order regime, no longer suited the spirit of reform.

So far, he quoted critics as saying, KNPI had only been the tool of those in power at the national and local level.

Agung said other suggestions were that there was no need to disband KNPI; it only needed to be reformed and restructured.

Agung added that yet other views were that it was only KNPI's leaders which needed to be replaced.

He added that he would not intervene in whatever the organization decided.

"We'll leave it to the youth to settle things for themselves," he said. (anr)