Habibie calls for successful MPR Special Session

JAKARTA (JP): President B.J. Habibie called on the nation Friday to help ensure the success of the Special Session of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), which he described as a very important milestone in Indonesia's journey through the past 53 years.

"There's no reason for anyone not to ensure the success of the session," Habibie said while receiving 50 ulemas and leaders of Islamic boarding schools from Java and Madura at the Merdeka Palace here.

"We have gone through a period of fighting and finally we come to the session, which we will conduct democratically in the next five days," he said.

He said the whole country should take part in making the session on Nov. 10-13 not only a success but also a peaceful and productive one.

"After this, we will have to be ready for the general election in five months time. It used to take us two years to prepare for an election contested by only three parties. This time, we have only five months to prepare for one with at least 100 new parties," he said.

Not all of the newly established parties, however, would be able to contest the poll as there were certain requirements to be met, Habibie said.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian Communion of Churches (PGI) has asked all churches and Christian Indonesians to say special prayers for the success of the session.

The communion also called in a press statement on Christian Indonesians to pray for national unity and strength so the country can cope with the economic crisis.

Chairman Sularso Sopater asked people to respect and appreciate different opinions and do away with selfishness, the release said.

"This would help accelerate the Special Session so that it could make significant decisions for the sake of total reform in the country," Sopater said.

Separately, Mochtar Pabottingi, a respected political scholar of the National Institute of Sciences (LIPI), said the upcoming session would not be relevant to the people's campaign for reform if it maintained the presence of the Armed Forces (ABRI) in the House of Representatives.

"The session can go ahead, but it must not endorse ABRI's presence in the House," he said in a political discussion organized by the National Mandate Party (PAN) here on Friday.

"It will be anti-democratic and if endorsed there'll be no democracy in our country," he said.

Another speaker in the discussion was Golkar legislator Marwah Daud Ibrahim, who claimed there actually was "mutual agreement" among legislators that "at a certain ideal point in time" the military presence in the House would end.

"The question remaining is whether we should end it now, once and for all, or gradually?" she said, but added that legislators favored the second option.

Pabottingi begged to differ, saying an offer for ABRI to remain only in the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) was indeed a gradual way for it to get out of politics.

He argued the military presence in politics had brought the nation more disasters than good since it had been abused by the power holders to serve their political interests.

The termination of the ABRI presence in politics was one of six requirements that Indonesia must meet before democratization can commence, Pabottingi said.

The other requirements were sound political parties, fair elections, legislatures that function well, solid judicial and executive branches of power, and a free media, Pabottingi said.

He speculated that it was possible the session would be abused by certain "anti-reform" forces within the Assembly, which he believed were still "a majority."

By including a draft decree on allotment of House seats for the Armed Forces among the documents to be deliberated by the Assembly, he argued, would effectively "shut people up."

"We are expecting a democratic election, but even before it is started it has been made anti-democratic with the inclusion of ABRI in the House," he said. (swe/aan)