Court order needed to dissolve Golkar: Political observers

JAKARTA (JP): Increasing demands to disband Golkar Party, the political vehicle of former president Soeharto, are understandable but unrealistic, political observers said on Thursday.

J. Kristiady, a political observer from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, and Maswadi Rauf, a political expert from the University of Indonesia, said they could understand why students and President Abdurrahman Wahid's supporters in East Java were demanding the government dissolve Golkar.

However, they said Golkar was a legitimate political party and could only be dissolved by the courts. Therefore, without a court order, the demands cannot be met without violating both the norms of democracy and the law.

"Both the students and the people can make such demands but they are unacceptable because the party's presence is guaranteed by the law.

"If they do not like Golkar they should not vote for the party in the next general election. (Disbanding Golkar) would set a bad precedence for democracy in the country, as other people could make similar demands against parties they do not like," Kristiadi said.

Maswadi acknowledged that Golkar was a symbol of the corruption, collusion, nepotism and repression of the New Order regime, but this did not justify taking illegal action to dissolve the party.

"This sort of stigmatization in politics is not appropriate in the reform era. Of the utmost importance is that we must fight against corruption, collusion and nepotism and kill their viruses, regardless of the ruling party," he said, adding that should Golkar win the next general election, it would have to be accepted as the ruling party.

Edwin Henawan Sukowati, the chairman of the National Democrats Party (PND), said Golkar could be dissolved by the courts if the authorities investigated what he said where Golkar's violations during the 1999 general election.

"The political chaos has a lot to do with the unfair elections in 1999," he said.

Edwin, who is a former member of the General Election Commission, said the Supreme Court refused to look into thousands of alleged violations committed by Golkar during the general election.

Speaking later in the day, President Abdurrahman Wahid said he was against attempts to "indiscriminately" attack everything associated with the past regime.

"Of course, we have to make a clean break with the past, but it cannot be done indiscriminately... we have to look at things carefully since not everything from the past is wrong," Abdurrahman said while speaking to university students.

He said breaking with the past should be done "in phases", and that the country's reform movement could not be completed overnight. (rms/byg)