Good President-TNI relationship sought

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)