Megawati told to start sweeping reform within PDI-P

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.