Govt drops plan of impeachment seminar

JAKARTA (JP): After months of debate, the government dropped yesterday its controversial plan to hold a seminar on the 1966 impeachment of first president Sukarno.

State Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Hayono Isman, who had initiated the plan, canceled the seminar which would have discussed the Provisional People's Consultative Assembly's rejection of Sukarno's accountability speech.

Hayono said several parties had advised him to cancel the seminar. He announced the cancellation after meeting President Soeharto at the Bina Graha presidential office.

"When you study it thoroughly, there is no need to hold a special seminar," Hayono quoted Soeharto as saying.

Sukarno, in his Nawaksara speech to an emergency session of the provisional consultative assembly in June 1966, defended his administration and failed, contrary to most expectations, to condemn the now-banned Indonesian Communist Party for its botched coup attempt in September 1965.

Hayono announced the seminar in March, creating controversy with some saying that it would only open old wounds.

Hayono said later that he would run a seminar at the end of this month to discuss whether there should be a seminar on the Nawaksara speech.

Yesterday, Hayono blamed press sensationalism for the controversy over the seminar.

"Press reports on the seminar had become a seminar in themselves," Hayono said.

Those who had strongly opposed the plan included Manai Sophian, a Sukarno admirer. He said the seminar would only be worthwhile if organizers let people speak freely.

Gen. (ret) Abdul Haris Nasution, who in 1966 chaired the session of the consultative assembly, had supported the idea but suggested that Hayono consider its timing.

Minister/State Secretary Moerdiono had defended the seminar, but said it should not be held until after next March's presidential election.

Armed Forces chief spokesman Brig. Gen. Slamet Supriadi had said the military supported the seminar to inform the public about what really happened during and after the session.

Hayono said in April that the seminar would also cover the March 11, 1966, decree (Supersemar), in which Sukarno authorized Soeharto to restore order in the country, because the letter and Sukarno's impeachment could not be separated.

A special hearing of the consultative assembly named Soeharto as a temporary replacement for Sukarno in 1967. A year later the assembly appointed Soeharto, then an Army lieutenant general, as president.

"From a national, historical point of view, Nawaksara is only a part of a series of events around the birth of the New Order," Hayono quoted Soeharto as saying yesterday. (06)