'Members of Korpri must vote Golkar'

JAKARTA (JP): Two senior government officials insisted yesterday that Indonesia's six million civil servants had to vote for Golkar in the coming general election.

Despite growing calls that members of the Indonesian Civil Servants Corps (Korpri) should be allowed to join any political organization, corps chairman Suryatna Subrata confirmed yesterday that members have to vote for the dominant political organization.

"The current administration is one of Golkar. Therefore, the corps members will automatically support and be loyal to the Golkar-dominated government," said Suryatna, who is secretary- general of the Ministry of Home Affairs and secretary-general of the General Elections Institute in charge of organizing the general election, scheduled for May 29.

"It's one of the consequences of being government employees," he said after briefing 185 provincial general election committee officials at the General Elections Institute yesterday.

Minister of Home Affairs Moch. Yogie S.M. agreed that the corps members did not have any choice but to vote for Golkar. Yogie is chairman of the General Elections Institute.

"Legally, Korpri members are free to vote for any of the three political organizations. However, they are also bound to the statutes of Korpri and the results of its congress which say that members must channel their political aspirations through Golkar," he told reporters.

Suryatna denied that the policy "castrated" the civil servants' political rights.

"The law guarantees that Korpri members can vote for any political grouping," he said. "But they would have to solicit their superiors' blessing before they could channel their aspirations through political groupings other than Golkar."

Survey

Suryatna and Yogie were commenting on the newly published results of a government-commissioned survey on people's political behavior by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences. Among the researchers' recommendations was that civil servants should be free to join any political organizations.

The scientists said that as long as the corps members remained tied to Golkar, poor public service standards would persist.

The report also said that although the 1985 Law on political organizations allows civil servants to join any political party, the guarantee does not apply in practice because such moves would be prohibited by their seniors.

Suryatna doubted the validity of the research. He called the study only a general observation on political affairs.

"Surveys on social affairs are not always valid," he said. "There are a number of aspects which were not included and discussed in the survey."

Suryatna said the policy of "monoloyalty" for civil servants was not permanent and was flexible, depending on which political grouping was ruling the country.

"If Golkar is no longer in power, this 'monoloyalty' policy would be reevaluated," he said. "For the time being, however, the loyalty toward the Golkar-dominated government is needed for the sake of sustainable development."

Without such a policy, he argued, "the state apparatus would be divided into several groups, and this situation would not be favorable for our development."

The researchers said in another part of their report that the government had instilled in civil servants the perception that they should vote for Golkar in every election if they wanted development programs to continue. (imn)

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