Contradictory hypothesis

Contradictory hypothesis

It is interesting to note the self contradictory hypothesis
purported by Mr. Gottfried Roelcke (The Jakarta Post, Nov. 5,
1999, Has the MPR failed the people?). There he theorized that
had the people been given the direct choice between Megawati
Soekarnoputri and Abdurrahman Wahid, popularly known as Gus Dur,
the majority would have voted for Gus Dur. I think this is a
misleading assumption because if a direct presidential election
had happened, the final candidates wouldn't have been Gus Dur and
Megawati, but Megawati and possibly B.J. Habibie. Here is my
reasoning.

The direct election of a president would have to be made in at
least two layers, considering there were 48 parties with over 40
presidential candidates. But this method would cost a lot of
money, so the election committee had to screen the candidates
through the people's representatives as on June 7, 1999.
According to this election result, we know that the Indonesian
Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) won almost half of
the votes (please, note 1/3 is the final result of said
calculation, but PDI Perjuangan's actual vote gain was about 50
percent), Golkar around 18 percent, PPP and PKB around 10
percent, PAN 7 percent, PBB 2 percent, and others less than 2
percent. Based on this, the final two eligible candidates were
Megawati and Habibie. Considering major resistance among the vast
majority of the people outside Sulawesi or Eastern Indonesia
toward Habibie, I would dare say that Megawati would have claimed
a compelling victory.

Gus Dur's nomination is a scheme by the political elite who
would do anything to stop Megawati. At grassroots level, there is
little such deadly resistance against Megawati. It would be
especially true if the power elite hadn't used religious issues
to incite the ill-educated masses.

Mr. Roelcke's statement that the remaining 65 percent was an
indication that the voters wanted a president other than Megawati
was self contradictory, because if that is the standard then Gus
Dur shouldn't be the president, should he? Isn't the remaining 90
percent non PKB voters a strong indication that they want a
president other than Gus Dur? The question is, as Ms. Rahayu
correctly pointed out, why this standard has been applied only to
PDI Perjuangan? Why the ganging up? It seems to me these
antiMegawati politicians are scared of their own shadows. It was
Habibie they should have been scared of, considering the
extraordinary mess he had created and failed to clean up during
his 18 month reign.

It is easy to hypothesize but the point of an election is
precisely to avoid these kind of polemics. And in this context I
take my hat off to people like Goenawan Mohamad, Wimar Witoelar
and Matori Abdul Djalil who despite their choice in the election
which was definitely not PDI Perjuangan, they defended the
essence of democracy by acknowledging the right of the election
winner that has indisputably won more votes than other parties to
be given the first opportunity to create a government. This is
what Mr. Roelcke has failed to heed with his emotional accusation
that Ms. Rahayu was a mere ardent, broken-hearted supporter of
PDI Perjuangan. That isn't the point, is it? She might have not
voted for PDI Perjuangan, the way I myself didn't.

I must say PDI Perjuangan's downfall is its overconfidence and
its failure to form a solid coalition, especially with PAN.
However, does this justify PAN and other Islamic parties, that
had previously broadcast their stern opposition to the status
quo, in preferring Habibie to Megawati? (This scenario would have
happened had the final choice been between Habibie and Megawati
considering their mild stance regarding Habibie's accountability
speech which berated many people). Wouldn't it have been a
contradiction to the people power that toppled Soeharto and also
a return to square one?

RIVA SIHOMBING

Jakarta