Good President-TNI relationship sought
JAKARTA (JP): In an effort to help establish peace in the country, the President and the Indonesian Military (TNI) should 'mend their fences', a sociologist said on Saturday.
"The security uncertainty nationwide is due to the worsening relationship between the President and TNI.
"Currently, the President has no grip over the 'crack instrument', that is TNI. It has become a powerful institution," University of Indonesia (UI) sociologist Thamrin Amal Tomagola said, while addressing a round-table discussion on major security problems co-organized by the Research Institute for Democracy and Peace (RIDeP) and German-based Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES).
"If compared with the New Order era, TNI, then known as the Indonesian Armed Forces (ABRI), became the crack instrument of former president Soeharto. Rather than being a military instrument, TNI has become a power holder itself," Thamrin said.
Thamrin was referring to policy differences between the President and TNI in handling separatism in restive Aceh province. While the government is still willing to continue dialogs with the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), TNI has been seeking to impose a military operation there.
Present at the discussion were Army Chief of Staff Gen. Endriartono Sutarto, deputy Speaker of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) from the National Police/TNI faction Lt. Gen. Hari Sabarno, senior deputy governor of Bank Indonesia Anwar Nasution, political observers Kusnanto Anggoro, Cornelis Lay and Hermawan Sulistyo, and RIDeP researcher M. Riefqi Muna.
Thamrin suggested the President and TNI immediately 'mend their fences', so that the government's security policies could win the support of TNI.
Meanwhile, Riefqi Muna said the separation between TNI's security and defense roles, stipulated in MPR decrees Nos. VI and VII/2000, should not be rigidly imposed since there was such "a grey area" between security, currently controlled by the police, and defense, controlled by the military.
"In performing their duties to handle unrest, the police have the authority to maintain security and order although they are no longer able to handle it. Meanwhile, TNI cannot take any action as it is prohibited from dealing with internal security.
"If we let this situation continue, we will only create more victims among innocent people," Riefqi said, while referring to the communal clashes such as in Maluku and in Sampit in Central Kalimantan.
"The military's involvement in helping maintain security and order is something unavoidable in certain conditions. If its involvement is to assist the police, it (the military involvement) is termed a Military Operation Other Than War (MOOTW)," Riefqi said.
"The military has two main duties: the war mission and the peace mission. MOOTW is the arena for the military's peace mission in its efforts to perform a civic role," Riefqi said.
However, he said that civilian politicians held the authority to determine whether the circumstances in certain regions needed military involvement.
He also underlined that TNI's 'rules of engagement' must be carefully determined as a political decision, so that the military will know exactly the limits of its authority and obligations.
Criticism over the Assembly's decree was also voiced by Cornelis Lay, saying that the decree was issued due to public pressure and hatred over the military's extensive involvement during the New Order regime.
"As we've been going through two years of reform and public hatred of the military has been decreasing, I guess we must re- evaluate whether the decree is still relevant," Cornelis said.
Meanwhile, rather than criticizing the decree, Gen. Endriartono proposed that during the "transitional period", the government, along with the House of Representatives, should formulate a "transitional regulation" that would stipulate TNI's "provisional authority" in maintaining internal security. (02)