Election promises mostly unworkable, analyst says

Election promises mostly unworkable, analyst says

M. Taufiqurrahman, Jakarta

Presidential candidates made lofty promises and developed
unfeasible policies in their campaigns, which were purely about
getting elected, analysts said.

Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) analyst Dewi Fortuna
Anwar said the programs presented by the candidates in their
month-long campaigns were mostly unattainable. Most contained no
clear plans of action, she said.

"In her campaign, the Indonesian Democratic Party of
Struggle's (PDI-P) incumbent President Megawati (Soekarnoputri)
repeatedly pledged to create 12 million jobs during her next
term.

"But she fell short of mentioning how much foreign investment
the country would need and how fast the economy would need to
grow to create these jobs given the current situation," she said
during a discussion at the General Elections Commission (KPU)
data center.

Dewi said other candidates also made grandiose pledges.
"Amien Rais always says he will ban all rice imports to support
local farmers, but what if a prolonged drought strikes the
country and staple food become scarce, would he still stick to
his promise -- I don't think so," she said.

Hamzah Haz also pledged to provide free education for all
without explaining how he would fund such a program, she said.

Prominent lawyer and human rights activist Todung Mulya Lubis
said all the candidates had failed to come up with detailed plans
of action to fix the nation's problems.

"All the candidates spoke about eradicating corruption in
their campaigns. But I never heard any of them set targets about
how many people they would try for graft offenses during the
first three months of their administration," he said.

A good start would have been for the candidates to have
pledged to try 12 tycoons implicated in the misuse of the Bank
Indonesia Liquidity fund (BLBI), Todung said.

Todung has been touted as one of the strongest candidates for
the Attorney General's post in the next administration.

Togung and Dewi said the General Elections Commission should
oblige the top-two polling candidates to draw up realistic and
concrete programs for their campaigns in the likely election
runoff in September.

"The candidates should also provide road maps on how they
would achieve these programs," Dewi said.

These road maps would help the next administration begin its
work quickly. "Three months is very short time and we don't want
the next government to spend it figuring out what to do," she
said.

KPU official Hamid Awaluddin said the commission planned to
ask second-round candidates to present detailed programs in their
campaigns.

"The presidential election law clearly requires candidates to
draw up specific programs, instead of the general plans they made
in the first round," he said.