Golkar proposes 12-year compulsory education
JAKARTA (JP): Golkar is designing a policy to extend children's compulsory education from nine to 12 years, party secretary Ary Mardjono said yesterday.
He said Golkar would encourage the government to incorporate it in the 1998 Guidelines of State Policies.
Golkar would propose more emphasis on moral education and improvements to the education system so that Indonesia could compete internationally, he said.
Golkar's rivals, the United Development Party (PPP) and the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) have proposed increasing the education component of the state budget from 12 percent to 25 percent.
Ary said that wealthier Asian countries had set aside 25 percent of their national budgets for education.
"It all sounds good but the thing is Golkar doesn't want to make promises that it knows will be impossible to keep," he said.
In Lampung, Minister of Education and Culture Wardiman Djojonegoro told Golkar supporters that demands to make school tuition free were totally unrealistic.
"We must know our own capacity. Under the current economic conditions it's impossible to free every secondary and high school student from school fees," Wardiman told students a rally.
In the Lampung town of Kotabumi, Golkar chief Harmoko said he was optimistic the party would win the election because of its realistic programs.
Harmoko defended the government's floating mass policy by saying people were free to join any of the three parties.
But under the policy, the parties are not allowed to have subdistrict of lower-level representative offices.
The PPP and PDI say the policy benefits Golkar because all civil servants in the villages through to provincial administrations were Golkar functionaries. Therefore Golkar did not need local offices.
"It is untrue to say that Golkar wins every election because of the floating mass policy," Harmoko said. "It wins because people enjoy the fruits of development."
Harmoko, also the minister of information, said Golkar now has 32 million registered members nationwide.
Golkar aims to win 70.02 percent of the vote on May 29. In the 1992 election, it won a majority of 68 percent.
Harmoko promised Golkar would seek to help Lampung build more electricity systems, roads, and bridges.
Golkar's campaign in the North Sumatra capital of Medan featured Akbar Tanjung, the state minister of people's housing.
Meanwhile, in Yogyakarta, hundreds of students of the Indonesian Islamic University demonstrated to condemn Golkar, whose supporters allegedly vandalized their Law Faculty during a rally Thursday.
The students unfurled dozens of banners, saying "Don't vote for a brutal contestant," and "Halt! Golkar is barred from campus". (aan/23/21/38)