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.