'Members of Korpri must vote Golkar'

'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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