Legal Aid Foundation scrambles for new leader
By Imanuddin
JAKARTA (JP): Vacancy available: Chairmanship of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI). Requirements: Bold and vocal on human rights and democracy, courageous in standing up to the government, may be emotional at times.
The above description best fits one person in this country: Adnan Buyung Nasution, the current chairman of YLBHI's executive board who has announced his plan to resign from the post.
Anyone elected, or appointed, to replace him is bound to have difficulties in matching the strong characteristics with which the YLBHI chairman has come to be known.
Buyung has yet to formally tender his resignation, but close friends in YLBHI said he has often talked about his plan in private, so that the announcement, made through a magazine interview published this week, did not come as a surprise.
Yet within YLBHI, one of the country's foremost campaigners of democracy of which Buyung has played no small part, an internal debate has already started on whether or not to accept his resignation, and if so, who will fill his shoes.
"Buyung told me early this month that he would soon submit a letter of resignation from YLBHI's chief post," Amartiwi Saleh, deputy chairman of YLBHI's executive board, said on Wednesday.
Amartiwi said YLBHI's Board of Trustees has to approve his resignation and that there is even a possibility that it might be rejected.
"If his resignation is accepted, the board of trustees will then decide who will replace Buyung for the rest of his leadership term," Amartiwi said, adding that the board is scheduled to meet on Oct. 12.
Both Buyung and Amartiwi sit on the 14-member board of trustees. Other members include Harjono Tjitrosoebono, who is also chairman of the board; senior journalist Mochtar Lubis; scholars Aswab Mahasin and Anwar Harjono; politician Ali Sadikin; and human rights campaigner H.J.C. Princen.
Buyung's chairmanship term is not scheduled to end until 1997. He was elected, or asked to return to captain the foundation in 1993 when the election process failed to conclusively elect a new leader.
Buyung has virtually spent most of his working career with the foundation, first as director of the Legal Aid Foundation in Jakarta between 1970 and 1980, and later as chairman of the foundation's executive board between 1981 and 1983.
Amartiwi said that as deputy chairperson of the executive board, she would not automatically replace Buyung. "No passages in YLBHI's statutes state that a deputy chairperson would automatically fill in the position left by the outgoing chairman," she said.
She said, however, that the new chairman is expected to be selected from among YLBHI's "internal cadres" rather than someone from outside.
YLBHI's Director of Communication and Special Programs Hendardi, however, said that YLBHI statutes do not preclude the possibility of recruiting someone from outside.
"YLBHI's statutes do not have any restrictions for outsiders to become the foundation's chairman," he said. "Only traditions show that chairmen have been selected from within YLBHI."
Two prominent names that have often been cited as possible candidates to replace Buyung are M.S. Zulkarnain, the executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, and Frans Hendra Winarta, current secretary of YLBHI's executive board.
The regional offices of the Legal Aid Institutes (LBH), meanwhile, are demanding that they have a say in the way the foundation selects a new executive chief.
Indro Sugianto, the director of LBH Surabaya said the board of trustees made a pledge last May that the branch offices would be involved in any decision on the chairmanship.
Indro confirmed that Buyung previously informally notified the branches outside Jakarta of his intention to resign when he traveled to the regional offices.
Speculation
Meanwhile, the reasons behind Buyung's intention to resign has been the subject of speculation.
But both Amartiwi and Hendardi said that whatever the reasons are, they are personal and not the result of external pressure.
"I can guarantee you that no external pressures could force him to resign," Amartiwi said. "He did once tell us that he would resume his career as a lawyer," she added.
Buyung once ran a successful corporate law office in between his two terms as YLBHI chairman.
Hendardi acknowledged that there had often been frictions within the YLBHI, but these were not the factors that made him decide to leave the foundation.
One particular rumor circulating within the YLBHI and other organizations is that Buyung's popularity in YLBHI has been waning of late, particularly among the more hard-line young generation of activists.
His critics say that his increasingly close association with some of the leading members of the Association of Indonesian Moslem Intellectuals (ICMI) compromises some of his ideals.
Amartiwi and Hendardi, however, said they did not see anything wrong with Buyung's close associations with ICMI leaders and other political figures.
"I know nothing about his political activities. But that is his business," Amartiwi said, adding that Buyung had never been reprimanded by the board of trustees regarding his activities outside the foundation.
"It is good if Buyung is involved in politics for the development of law and democracy in Indonesia," Hendardi said.
Buyung, who has been in Tokyo this past week, said in an interview with Forum Keadilan magazine that he planned to continue the struggle for the upholding of the law and democracy in Indonesia when he leaves the YLBHI chairmanship.
He conceded that his position as YLBHI chairman often constrained his political activities.