Govt drops proposal to increase PDI seats

JAKARTA (JP): After three weeks of controversy, the government has given up trying to increase the number of Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) seats in the House of Representatives after the three parties failed to reach a consensus.

The General Elections Committee's deputy secretary-general, Walujo, said yesterday the decision was made because of the United Development Party's (PPP) strong opposition to the proposed transfer of votes to the PDI.

"There is no other reason for considering the proposal," Walujo said at the elections committee's office.

He said the counting of excess votes would be done according to electoral regulations.

The committee's decision contradicted Minister/State Secretary Moerdiono's statement Thursday that the PDI and PPP should put national interests before their own and retract earlier refusals to allow vote trading among the parties.

"Increasing the PDI's number of seats in the House is needed to sustain the country's political process," Moerdiono had told reporters.

The PPP and PDI have rejected the proposed vote tradeoff.

On Thursday, the PPP reiterated its opposition to the proposal to grant Golkar's excess votes to the PDI.

"We decided in a meeting (Wednesday) that post-election vote grants are unacceptable," PPP secretary-general Tosari Wijaya said.

The proposal to give the PDI excess votes from Golkar and PPP came from Golkar's chairman, Harmoko.

Provisional results of the May 29 election show that Golkar has won 325 seats in the House, PPP 89 and PDI 10 after the calculation of 115 million ballots.

Walujo said the elections committee could understand the PPP's decision to reject the proposal.

"The PPP must have had their own reasons, which we have to respect," he said.

He said that officials from the General Elections Committee had visited and held discussion with PPP executives. However, "such good intention (behind the visit) will not always end up with good results."

In a related development, a dozen Golkar supporters demonstrated at the House yesterday over their leaders' plan to give votes to PDI.

"We voted for a certain party during the election, not for another one.

"Vote offering obviously violates the ethics of democracy because people's faith in the party is manipulated by the elite, not to mention the government's role in the negotiations," said a statement by the demonstrators read by their leader, Syarif Bastaman.

According to the 1985 Election Law, vote-trading deals must be made public before the announcement of legislative candidates.

The demonstrators said they doubted that people who won seats through vote trading would represent the people.

"Instead, they will serve as the mouthpiece of the party which helped them (enter the House)," the statement said.

The demonstrators lashed out at the vote-trading plan for harming the House's dignity by reducing its capacity to function as an elite representative body.

Another group of Golkar supporters lodged protests over the proposal with Golkar's central executive board and the elections committee.

"The vote tradeoff will violate people's sovereign rights and the electoral law," said the group's statement read by lawyer R.O. Tambunan.

Tambunan said the group would file a lawsuit against Golkar's central board and the elections committee if the plan went ahead.

The House's internal regulations imply that a party must have at least 13 legislators to have at least one representative in the House's leadership, a party faction leader and a representative in each of the House's 11 commissions.

Ministry of Home Affairs spokesman H.S.A. Yusacc said yesterday that PDI had gained an additional seat in the House after it had made significant gains in the final stages of ballot counting, gaining 64,269 votes for a total of 395,583 votes in North Sumatra.

Officials results on this, however, are yet to be released.

The additional votes mean that Fatimah Achmad, listed second on the PDI candidate list for North Sumatra, will join the party's lineup of 11 House members.

She was among a small group of PDI executives who initiated a government-backed rebel party congress in Medan last June that toppled PDI chief Megawati Soekarnoputri, and replaced her with Soerjadi. (imn/amd/05)

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