Military told to quit politics

Berni K. Moestafa and Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Should a state institution such as the ministry of finance or the ministry of health get seats in the House of Representatives?

By the same token, should the military get seats in the House? The answer is a resounding no, according to political and military experts who urged the military drop their House seats in exchange for voting rights in the 2004 general election.

Debate rages over plans to remove military legislators from the House before the scheduled removal in 2009 by granting them voting rights.

"The military doesn't belong there (in the House).... they should vote like any other citizens," said political observer Hermawan Sulistyo of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) on Tuesday.

This has also been the message of the general election bill, which the Ministry of Home Affairs recently submitted to the House.

The bill demands members of the Indonesian Military (TNI) and the National Police to take to the ballot and give up their seats in the House and the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) by 2004.

It also supports the ongoing amendment process of the 1945 Constitution that, if approved by the MPR, will bring forward TNI's removal from the legislature to 2004 instead of 2009.

So far, disagreement over the general election bill runs deep. While the notion of a voting military met little objection, concern has surfaced whether TNI could exercise its right without crumbling into warring political factions.

But analysts said the debates would boil down to whether or not the military should retain their political clout within the legislature until 2009 or force them out by 2004.

The military has signaled its reluctance to accept their voting rights and leave the House behind.

On Monday TNI top brass indicated that they favored the 2009 schedule, reasoning that they needed more time to "prepare" soldiers to vote.

Earlier, senior TNI officials had warned of dangerous cracks within the military if soldiers were given voting rights.

"They shouldn't be calling themselves a national military if they think mere voting rights would threaten their unity," Hermawan remarked.

He said by waiving their voting rights, the military would continue to enjoy its 38 free seats in the legislature, meaning that a military member need not be elected to become a legislator.

The seats had been given as "compensation" in the late sixties when president Soeharto banned the military from voting.

Only after Soeharto fell in 1998 after the student reform movement did lawmakers agreed to phase out the military presence in the legislature.

"The seats that the military owns are way too many compared to the number of people they represent," Hermawan said.

According to him, with some 430,000 members, the military should have no more than two seats in the House. Instead they had 38 and that was after the government slashed the number from 75.

The military influence is also felt outside the House where they take up high ranking posts within the government.

Military observer Lt. Gen. (ret.) Hasnan Habib urged the military to accept their voting rights. "In any democratic country, that political right is given (to the military)," Hasnan was quoted as saying by Antara.

Calls for the military to reduce its political clout and withdraw from the legislature are part of the original demands of the 1998 student reform movement.

But a source at the TNI headquarters said the military had no intention of leaving politics behind just yet.

According to the source, the military also was attempting to stall the ongoing amendment process of the 1945 Constitution as it aimed to expedite TNI's removal from politics.

To this point, legislators remain divided over the general election bill and the constitutional amendment process.

Analysts have said that large political parties might refrain from coming down too hard on the military, fearing they could lose the TNI's political support or provoke their ire.

MPR Speaker and chairman of the National Mandate Party (PAN), Amien Rais apparently was on the side of the TNI in this issue as he said earlier that it would be too dangerous for the military to have voting rights.