Legislation blamed for frequent TNI-police clashes

Legislation blamed for frequent TNI-police clashes

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The frequent clashes between members of the Indonesian Military
(TNI) and the National Police across the country are the result
of the separation of the two institutions, military officers and
an observer say.

Maj. Gen. Sudrajat, the director-general of strategic planning
of the defense ministry, also said on Thursday that legislators
and the government must consider reviewing several laws
concerning the separation of the police from the military.

The legislation, particularly the People's Consultative
Assembly Decree No. 6/2000 and No. 7/2000 concerning the
authority of each institution, have confused both police and
military personnel, he argued.

"Legislators and the government cannot order the military to
handle external security threats and the police to handle
internal security threats just like that.

"We are currently facing nontraditional security threats, a
domain which is the responsibility of both the military and the
police," said Sudrajat, suggesting that there would not be any
invasions from other countries for the next 20 years.

The legislation, he said, has created rivalry, as exemplified
in the issue of terrorism, which has created rivalry between the
police, which set up an antiterror team, and the military, which
has many similar teams.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ryamizard Ryacudu concurred, saying
that the clashes between the military and the police were the
result of the legislation.

"There will be further clashes (between the military and
police members) in the future if the legislation is not changed,"
he was quoted by Antara as saying in Magelang, Central Java.

Meanwhile, military analyst Edy Prasetyono of the Centre for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) agreed that the
decrees needed to be reviewed or amended, saying that they failed
to accommodate the government's right to deploy either the
military or police for security duties.

"The police are supposedly under the home affairs ministry,
and the military has been put under the defense ministry. This
unequal distribution of power has created jealousy among military
personnel. The commanders might accept this but not their
subordinates across the country," he explained.

Edy said that legislators should not decide the duties of the
military and police.

"There are gray areas such as armed-rebellion, which is
obviously not only the responsibility of police. Legislators and
the government must understand that only the government has the
authority to deploy either police or military forces to settle
security threats," he said.

The government must be able to decide when they have to deploy
police or when it has to order military to deal with security
threats.

"So, the duties of the military and police must be based on
the level of security threats. It is the government that decides
on the institution to be deployed during times of peace and low
conflict, or in times of conflict and war," Edy said.

Sudrajat, however, admitted that the military was still
experiencing difficulty in accepting civilian leadership.

"The military has not been ordered by civilians for years.
Now, they sometimes have to receive instructions from uniformed
(police officers). It is hard for them to accept this,
particularly when they have to receive orders from civilians in
the defense ministry," he revealed.

Separately, legislator Happy Bone Zulkarnaen and former
National Police chief Awaloeddin Djamien rejected the theory that
legislation had caused clashes among the security forces, saying
that the clashes were about discipline.

The clashes between police and military personnel in East
Kalimantan on Tuesday were the latest of many clashes following a
similar incident in South Sulawesi a week earlier.

In February, soldiers and police officers were involved in a
clash in Dumai, a Riau port town, in which two policemen were
injured, while in September 2002 eight people were killed in 10
hours of fighting between the Army and police in the town of
Binjai, North Sumatra.