Megawati told to start sweeping reform within PDI-P
M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) risks failing miserably in future elections, and faced the prospect of losing the bulk of its loyal supporters, unless the party's next leadership initiates sweeping internal reform, an observer said.
A political analyst at Surabaya-based Airlangga University, Daniel Sparringa, said the party's leadership, that pivoted on the charisma of its incumbent leader Megawati Soekarnoputri, had bred conservatism and orthodoxy that prevented change from occurring within the party, in spite of successive defeats in last year's legislative and presidential elections.
"The party has become stagnant and hesitant to embark on reform. And the current state is far more dangerous than just simply a party being led to its destruction by outside forces. Its loyal supporters will leave the party with little fanfare and without the knowledge of party leaders at the 2009 election. PDI- P will lose half of its support," Daniel said in a discussion here on Thursday
He said that Megawati's style of leadership had given rise to inertia within the PDI-P's rank and file that made them oblivious to the multifarious demands of the party's grassroots supporters.
"They have been out of touch with reality for too long now," Daniel said.
Despite the current situation, Daniel predicted that Megawati would be re-elected for another five-year term at the party's congress next week on Bali, simply because there are no alternative candidates who are capable of matching her.
"It is a foregone conclusion that Megawati will be re-elected at the Bali congress, as she will not face competition from a vice president," Daniel said, recalling the Golkar Party congress last December that saw Vice President Jusuf Kalla outdo incumbent party leader Akbar Tandjung.
With the re-election of Megawati, Daniel said that the prospects for change would be in her hands.
"Upon starting her new term, Megawati must immediately adapt to the new situation and begin reforms. A change from within is always less costly than a transformation that is imposed from the outside," Daniel said.
Megawati has been at the helm of the PDI-P for more than 10 years now. She assumed the party's leadership after she was elected to replace the then party chairman Soerjadi in 1993. At that time the party was called the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI).
She later emerged as an opposition figure after her leadership was shackled by then president Soeharto who had grown uneasy with her growing popularity. A government-supported plot was devised to end her term, ending with the forcible takeover of the party's headquarters on Jl. Diponegoro in Central Jakarta on 27 July, 1996 in which six PDI supporters were killed by the security apparatus.
Some of those involved in the attack have since been jailed, although former president Soeharto and the military leadership at that time have never been directly implicated in the case.
PDI-P deputy chairman Roy B.B. Janis shared Daniel's view that the party was in a dire need of change if it wanted to prosper in the future.
"PDI-P has to reform itself even if it is at the cost of Megawati's leadership of the party," he said.
A group of party members have been campaigning for reform ahead of the congress. They blamed Megawati's style of leadership for a string of upset defeats suffered by the party.
Apart from losing the legislative and presidential elections, the party missed winning the speaker's position in both the People's Consultative Assembly and the House of Representatives, as well as being left out of the Cabinet of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.