Experts warn of dangers in TNI bill

Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Experts have warned of more loopholes in the controversial military bill and urged the public at large to be vigilant against the return of the military to the country's political life.

Rizal Sukma of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said on Wednesday that Article 7 of the military bill allowed the military's return to politics.

Article 7 of the bill, which Minister of Defense Matori Abdul Djalil has promised to revise, suggests that the Army carry out its duties based on its doctrine and operational strategy.

This article, according to Rizal, could be interpreted by the Army alone based on its own interests and conditions.

Some military observers said earlier that the Army has recently drafted a new doctrine reinstating their dominant territorial role slowly scrapped following the downfall of former dictator president Soeharto in 1998.

Rights campaigner Munir, meanwhile, warned the public at large that the Army's latest doctrine was strongly related to election law No. 12/2003 which stipulates that legislative candidates should not have been involved or implicated in the abortive coup d'etat on Sept. 30, 1965 blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party.

"Still to this day, the military is the only state institution that has a complete record of all the people believed to be involved in the 1965 abortive coup. This means any legislative candidate would have to undergo a screening by the military to ensure whether or not he or his relatives were directly or indirectly involved," said Munir, co-founder of the National Commission on Missing Person and Victims of the Violence (Kontras).

President Megawati Soekarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) had once rejected the clause's inclusion in the election law but was outnumbered by the other factions in the House of Representatives.

In 1966, the Army decided to promote dwifungsi or dualfunction as the military's doctrine designed following the 1965 coup to help restore political stability and democracy in Indonesia.

The doctrine essentially empowered the military both in defense and sociopolitical roles during the 32-year regime of former president Soeharto's authoritarian rule. It also encompassed and brought about the omnipresence characterized by the Army's territorial command, which goes all the way down to the village level.

As the country entered the reform era in 1998, the public demanded that the military's dominating political role and dwifungsi be reduced, and such demands had won in 2002 the support of the People's Consultative Assembly, the country's highest legislative body, when it decided to end the military's presence in both MPR and DPR by 2004.

Rizal, one of the civilian experts drafting the military bill, slammed civilian politicians who tended to establish "a good relationship" with the military ahead of the 2004 general election, saying the move "will pave the way for the military to enjoy its political role again."