Interest Group faction at MPR faces guillotine
Abu Hanifah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Interest Group faction, a non-elected group in the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), were fighting for survival on Wednesday claiming they were still a necessary component of the Assembly.
The 65-member faction will be scrapped if the MPR eventually endorses the change of the current system into a bicameral system similar to the U.S. congress in which all members are elected, to either the Senate or the House.
Deliberations on the change from the current system are currently under deliberation. Most factions are reported to have supported the idea.
Interest Group faction members, shocked by the plan, charged that those who endorsed the elimination of the faction had betrayed the MPR principle of accommodating all groups in Indonesia.
"The problem is that not all political parties have the will to represent certain groups in society in the law-making process," Harun Kamil, the Interest Group faction chairman, told reporters.
The "interest groups" consist of representatives from, among others, cooperatives, civil servants, teachers, women's groups, laborers, journalists, religious-based organizations, farmers, fisheries and war veterans.
They are appointed by their respective organizations, not elected in the general elections. The 1945 Constitution states that the MPR consists of the members of the House of Representatives and the interest groups.
Present at yesterday's press briefing were Interest Group members such as Nursjahbani Katjasungkana, Sri Edi Swasono, Soedijarto, Rais Abin, Mohamad Assegaf and Sabam Siagian.
Sabam, from the Indonesian Christian Intelligentsia Association (PIKI), insisted that the faction needed to be retained until Indonesia had a good election system which allows representation throughout society.
"Perhaps in 10 years, we will not need it. But it would be premature to drop it now," he said.
The groups which supported the idea of retaining the Interest Group faction in the MPR were significant however, those being the Military/Police faction and President Megawati Soekarnoputri's Indonesia Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan), the largest single faction in the MPR.