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)