Has the MPR failed the people?

I am writing in response to Ms. Rahayu's article MPR fails to heed people's voice, of Nov. 2, 1999, and I consider her blanket accusation against the honorable members of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) utterly unfair and self-righteous, written exclusively from the point of view of an ardent, if not broken-hearted, supporter of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan).

It appears, indeed, that Ms. Rahayu writes more with her feelings than with her head. She is just being emotional, repeats herself over and over adds nothing to the validity of her theses. She complains about some perceived peculiarities of Indonesia's (present) politics. The main peculiarity, though, is probably that a person who gets just one third of the votes is considered "the winner of the election" (by herself and by those who adore her for whatever reason).

The fact is, there was no clear election winner. Nobody can say for sure how the people would have voted if the choice had been limited to just the two persons who now have been chosen by the MPR to lead the country.

There is absolutely no proof that Megawati Soekarnoputri would have achieved a majority. I dare to guesstimate that the vast majority of those who voted for the National Awakening Party, United Development Party, National Mandate Party, Star and Crescent Party and some smaller Islamic parties, plus most of the Functional Group (Golkar) voters would have preferred Abdurrahman Wahid as president. That would probably be more than 50 percent.

All of PDI Perjuangan plus, perhaps, one-third of the Golkar vote may have been about 42 percent, and with a few more voters from several mini parties Megawati might have reached 47 percent. Now, isn't that exactly reflected in the outcome of the MPR vote? -- 65 percent of the voters preferred a party other than PDI Perjuangan; that's not fuzzy logic, as Ms. Rahayu is trying to argue, it's a hard fact, and if there is anything fuzzy around here, then it's probably Ms. Rahayu's perception of the realities.

Megawati is simply not the winner of the election, however much her fanatic supporters would want to believe that (and forcefully make the other 65 percent of voters accept it). Nobody can say for sure what all those people were thinking who voted for a party other than PDI Perjuangan. To what extent are they really divided in their goals, or to what extent do they just choose different avenues toward the same destination, namely a president other than Megawati? There is a high chance that unrest would have broken out in other areas if Megawati had been elected as president; the demonstrations in Sulawesi and Kalimantan speak for themselves.

I feel that I have to defend the honor of the MPR members. This is, indeed, a very difficult phase in Indonesia's political history.

In Germany, the transition from Hitler's dictatorship to a stable democracy took some eight years, half of that under foreign political management. The 1949 election there resulted in the same confusing picture as the 1999 election here, but Konrad Adenauer managed to build a multiparty coalition he could work with, given the sense of realities and the political skills that he had, in contrast to the leaders of PDI Perjuangan.

I believe the Indonesian nation and the MPR have every reason to be proud of themselves for the way they managed the transition from dictatorship to democracy, in view of the fact that the people's will is by no means uniform but varies widely between regions and between social groups, and in spite of several undeniable shortcomings.

GOTTFRIED ROELCKE

Surabaya