Harjono takes top Ikadin post again
Harjono takes top Ikadin post again
YOGYAKARTA (JP): Incumbent chairman Harjono Tjitrosoebono was re-elected yesterday to lead the Indonesian Bar Association (Ikadin) for a third consecutive five-year term.
There were no fistfights this time around, in contrast with the last election five years ago, but the Ikadin congress still left many delegates with a feeling of bitterness.
As the congress closed, some delegates were calling for the expulsion of Todung Mulya Lubis, Harjono's closest rival in the race, for his remarks denouncing the congress as "undemocratic".
The election's outcome was already determined on Thursday when the congress insisted that any candidate must have served in an executive position and have practiced as a lawyer for 10 years.
This precluded Mulya from running for the chairmanship.
Thus, yesterday's election was a mere formality. Harjono won 167 votes, well ahead of other candidates Djohan Djauhari, who garnered 139 votes, and Maruli Simorangkir, who gained 91 votes. Djohan had served as secretary-general on the outgoing Ikadin executive board and Maruli was its deputy chairman.
The plenary session for the election was led by Maruli, who was the chairman of the steering committee. All the 30 branches of Ikadin were represented in the election.
Ikadin's in-house rules originally should have precluded Harjono's re-election, since they state that a chairman can only serve for one five-year term. However, the congress agreed to disregard that rule.
Harjono's reelection is in defiance of the government's recent call for Ikadin to "rejuvenate" its leadership. Harjono, 71 years old, has been credited with maintaining Ikadin's independence from the government.
"I am emotionally touched by the congress' confidence in me to lead Ikadin once again," Harjono said after his reelection. "The congress has been run in a democratic fashion. No one comes out a winner or a loser," he added.
He called on all parties not to harbor ill feelings in spite of the fierce contest in the election.
The tone of some of the other delegates to the congress was far less conciliatory.
Henry Yosodiningrat and Tumbu Saraswati, two respected Jakarta lawyers, said Mulya had denigrated the good name of Ikadin when he called the congress "undemocratic".
Tumbu, who heads Ikadin's South Jakarta chapter, where Mulya is registered, said she would summon Mulya and reprimand him. She said she might even dismiss him from the lawyers' organization.
A clearly angry Mulya called a press conference on Thursday to announce the withdrawal of his candidacy in the election, which he said was a farce.
Mulya said his opponents had resorted to cheap tricks by describing him as a government candidate or alleging that he was buying votes.
"The climate in Ikadin is not healthy. Democratic values have been defeated to serve the interests of a certain group and ambitious individuals," Mulya said.
Other delegates, meanwhile, called on Harjono to heed the appeals to rejuvenate Ikadin's leadership.
"Harjono has been validly and democratically been elected. There was no outside pressure during the congress," Luhut M.P. Pangaribuan, chairman of the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute, told The Jakarta Post.
Luhut said, however, that Ikadin needs to have new blood and that the congress had failed to infuse it.
He also suggested that, besides including younger lawyers on the new board, Harjono should also recruit women to the board.
In his inauguration speech after the election, Harjono outlined some of the programs he plans to carry out.
One of these is to prepare Indonesian lawyers to deal with the trade liberalization moves which would allow foreign lawyers to compete on Indonesian soil. "We need to protect our members from a foreign lawyers' invasion," he said. (02/har/imn)