Golkar's policy draft to be used as reference

Golkar's policy draft to be used as reference

JAKARTA (JP): After a week of debate, minority factions in the
People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) agreed yesterday to use
Golkar's draft as the outline for drawing up the coming state
policy guidelines (GBHN).

After a week of delays and long debates, representatives of
the United Development Party (PPP) and the Indonesian Democratic
Party (PDI) acquiesced with a note of defiance.

They maintained that their factions accepted Golkar's draft
only because of procedural reasons.

"We have to adopt one draft to become the main topic,
reference or whatever its name is, to enable our session to
proceed smoothly," PDI's Soedarjanto told the Assembly committee
in charge of state policy guidelines.

"We are pressed for time, so we need a pragmatic approach to
end this debate," he added.

In exchange for the approval, the committee agreed to accept
all the drafts proposed by the five factions in the Assembly as
official documents which would be taken into account in the
drawing up of the state policy guidelines.

Until yesterday's session, PPP and PDI refused to join the
Armed Forces and the regional representative factions to back the
dominant Golkar's bid to make its draft the reference for the
coming deliberations.

PPP had proposed its own draft, while PDI suggested the
Assembly readopt the 1993 state policy guidelines as the outline.

A relieved chief of the committee, R. Hartono, hailed
yesterday the unanimous support for the Golkar draft in spite of
the committee's different views.

"I thank all the committee members for their statesmanship and
wisdom that have led us to an approval. Each of us fully
understands that we have to agree to one thing first before going
to another debate," said Hartono who is also Minister of
Information.

"Nobody wins or loses. We will work together to improve the
draft because we want to present a state policy guideline which
can meet public demands," he claimed.

The drawing up of the state policy guidelines starts today.
Hartono said the committee could end its job earlier than the
original deadline of Jan. 22 next year.

Stubborn

The debate over which outline to use looked as if it would
drag on further earlier yesterday morning with PPP spokesman
Muhammad Buang saying that his faction would not budge from its
position.

This prompted Hartono to adjourn the meeting for a three-hour
break only minutes after he opened the session. He asked each
faction team to consult its leaders during the interval.

PPP's and PDI's stubbornness subsided after the session
resumed in the afternoon.

"For the sake of national interests, we do not mind accepting
the Golkar draft. We have found out that after studying the other
drafts, there are many similarities, although we believe our
draft is able to meet the public's aspirations the best compared
to the others," Buang said.

Soedarjanto said PDI admitted that committee members had
discussed various issues of the draft's semantics during the
break.

Golkar spokeswoman Siti Hardiyanti praised PPP and PDI for
their approval but said that their compliance did not mean a
defeat for anyone.

"Our draft is not the best one," she humbly conceded. "It's
open for improvement by other factions." (amd)