HMI intensifies pressure to eject ABRI from House
JAKARTA (JP): The People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) must scrap the Armed Forces' (ABRI) seats in the House of Representatives (DPR) during its Nov. 10 to Nov. 13 Special Session, an influential student group said on Tuesday.
The Association of Islamic Students (HMI) also said that ABRI should be restricted to a role in the Assembly among the representatives of professional groups, rather than continue with its current heavy presence in the legislature.
HMI also urged the Assembly to pass a decree ordering an investigation into political crimes allegedly committed by former president Soeharto and another dealing with mechanisms to eradicate corruption, collusion and nepotism from governance.
HMI's acting chairman, Ramdhansyah, and secretary-general Zulkifli told a news conference here that members of the association would meet with the MPR's dominant Golkar faction on Nov. 5 to channel their demands.
Ramdhansyah said HMI would then stage a demonstration involving an estimated 10,000 people at the House on the following day to push for its demands to be heeded, adding that the association would "of course abide by the existing rules".
Law No. 9/1998 on freedom of expression requires demonstration organizers to notify the police of their intentions three days in advance. Police said they have received notification of several planned demonstrations.
Ramdhansyah stated that the MPR would be failing to accommodate aspirations for reform if it ignored the association's demands.
Calls for the Assembly to eject the Armed Forces from the DPR have intensified since Soeharto's downfall. Mounting public opposition to the military's presence in the House has resulted from their implication in human rights abuses.
In an attempt to improve its poor public image, the military recently attempted to "redefine" its role. ABRI then agreed to cut its allocation of seats in the DPR to 55 from the present number of 75, the former being 10 percent of the new 550-member House of Representatives.
Several groups want ABRI out of the DPR once and for all.
On Tuesday a member of the government team drafting the political laws, scholar Andi Mallarengeng, was quoted by Reuters as saying that if the House passed a decree drafted by the People's Consultative Assembly in the Special Session, then it had no choice but to pass laws in accordance with the decree.
ABRI's representation in the Assembly and the House is touched upon in the decree on general elections. On Sunday, military observer Harry Tjan Silalahi argued that ABRI could still influence politics through the drafting of the State Policy Guidelines in the Assembly, or through a ministerial post.
Megawati
The MPR, aware of its low political clout and legitimacy, on Monday invited the chairwoman of the splintered Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) Megawati Soekarnoputri, chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama Moslem organization Abdurrahman Wahid and National Mandate Party (PAN) leader Amien Rais to become Assembly members. Both Amien and Megawati have rejected the proposition.
"I think the issue is no longer relevant," she said after meeting Japanese foreign minister Masahiko Komura. PDI executive Kwik Kian Gie was quoted by Antara as saying the offer to include Megawati in the societal group representation was "an insult" because her faction of the PDI is not recognized as a party.
In Semarang, Central Java, Amien said it would be impossible for him to attend the session. "If I had to fight 1,000 people, I would surely lose," he said. Another prominent party leader, Yusril Ihza Mahendra of the Crescent Star Party, said that he soon intends to resign from his membership in the MPR's societal group representation because he is now a party chairman. (har/aan)