Golkar's felonious ploy

Golkar's felonious ploy

Every time Indonesians, whose sense of humanitarianism remains
intact, speak about civil servants, they do so with strong
emotion. This is due to the fact that for decades, administration
after administration, the crusade to improve the lot of civil
servants has proved unfruitful.

However, with or without this sense of empathy, when leaders
of the government party, Golkar, speak about this worst paid
group of our workforce, they always assess the political
importance of the hapless civil servants.

As inhumane as it may sound, for more than three decades under
the implementation of president Soeharto's dirty politics,
members of the Indonesian Civil Servants Corps were made part and
parcel of the authoritarian machine. Soeharto's fall was no
guarantee that the rotten mentality he left behind would vanish,
and today there are still many reminders of this ugly legacy.

The weird fuss now dominating the House of Representatives'
discussions on political bills, which are now touching upon the
status of civil servants, was initiated by Golkar, the dominant
faction.

In the minds of Golkar leaders, the four million civil
servants, many of whom still hold key position in the
administration, should be given the freedom to become executives
of any political party. The government, which sponsors the bill,
and all other House factions are not in agreement over the idea
because it will possibly disrupt the fair services rendered to
the public by civil servants.

According to the bill, the civic rights of civil servants will
not be denied at all since they will have the right to vote in
general elections.

A political analyst has warned against such a move, saying
that if civil servants are allowed to be executives of political
parties, it would create potential "power politics", whereas in
any situation the bureaucracy should remain neutral in politics.
They should serve all with absolute impartiality. Another
political observer has also said that allowing civil servants to
enter politics would be tantamount to allowing them to violate
other people's human rights.

While Golkar has cited human rights as a reason for its
proposal, many people have no difficulty in guessing what kind of
human rights the group believes in. Golkar leaders must be well
aware that in the provinces, bureaucrats, who used to violate
every constitutional right of their citizens to ensure the
reelection of Soeharto, are still operating under the same old
mentality. Many of them foolishly feel that Soeharto still rules
supreme both over the country and over Golkar.

By fighting for the proposal -- and it will surely get what it
wants due to the majority it enjoys in the House -- Golkar
leaders will have to make use of the remnants of the politically
corrupt bureaucrats to keep the group's head above water in next
June's poll.

Many Golkar executives have appeared panic-stricken at the
burgeoning of new political parties and the rejection of Golkar
by the public, many of who blame it for impoverishing the people.

With new members of the executive board or not, with new
political clout or not, in the eyes of the public Golkar comes
with a hereditary sin attached to it. It is felt that the group
is nothing but a horrible ghost of Soeharto's past and it must be
the first party rejected in the elections.

Its determination to see the proposal accepted shows that it
is a curse to the nation's fight for reform. That so many parties
have called for public support outside the legislative body to
foil Golkar's intrigue shows how serious it would be if the
proposal is enacted into law.