Megawati believes many cadres ready for presidency

JAKARTA (JP): First president Sukarno's eldest daughter Megawati Soekarnoputri said yesterday that it was a myth that no candidate other than incumbent Soeharto is eligible to stand for the presidency.

Megawati said she believed that a number of state leadership cadres would be ready to fill the vacancy if President Soeharto was not reelected next year.

"I believe that he (Soeharto) must have long prepared his cadres for presidency," she said in a rare interview with local journalists at her home in the Kebagusan subdistrict, South Jakarta.

The ousted leader of the Indonesian Democratic Party was commenting on the dominant political organization Golkar's resolute decision to renominate Soeharto in next year's presidential election.

Megawati said she remembered the day in 1963, when at the age of 16, she asked her father: "Is there really no one else for the presidency?"

Conversation

The conversation took place a few days before a general meeting of the Provisional People's Consultative Assembly (MPRS) in May 1963. Sukarno asked her opinion of the assembly's plan to declare him as the country's lifelong president.

She said her father was surprised by her question and immediately asked her why she had asked that.

"I reminded him of his prior remarks that he had prepared some of his cadres to replace him one day," she said.

"I might say the wrong thing in your opinion," she recalled saying. "But shouldn't you let your cadres go to the top and replace you, regardless of whether you like it or not?"

Her father replied: "How dare you say such a thing. It was the people who wanted me to be their lifelong president."

Megawati, lauded as one of the country's prodemocracy figures, then told her father that he was no longer fit for presidency.

"I told him that he was old already and needed to spend time with his family -- the only thing he had missed out on in his past life," she said.

She told her father that his health was deteriorating.

"What will happen to the Republic if suddenly you cannot continue your service and have to resign within your term of office?" she asked her father.

"Yes, you're right," Sukarno eventually said. He was 62 years old at the time and had chronic kidney failure.

However, Sukarno did not follow his daughter's advice.

Honor

Later that year he accepted the honor of lifelong president from the MPRS.

Sukarno was replaced by Soeharto in an extraordinary meeting of the MPRS four years later when he was declared no longer capable of continuing his term after an abortive coup attempt by the subsequently outlawed Indonesian Communist Party in 1965.

Despite Soeharto's call Sunday that Golkar should reconfirm its decision with its supporters, chairman Harmoko said Monday that Golkar would stick to its prior statement that it had only one name for the presidency, Muhammad Soeharto (Soeharto's complete name).

Members of the 1,000-strong People's Consultative Assembly will convene next March to elect a president and vice president and endorse the 1998/2003 State Policy Guidelines. (imn)