More dialog required

JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Home Affairs Moch. Yogie S.M. warned yesterday that political chaos looms ahead unless Indonesia is able to handle the increasingly difficult challenges.

Addressing the annual leadership meeting of the ruling Golkar political grouping yesterday, Yogie reminded of the need for the government, political organizations and experts to hold "intensive and extensive dialogs" and establish rules of the future political game.

"They need to sit together and come up with adequate and progressive guidance and a code of conduct," he said.

One of the most important political challenges to be faced in the coming 25 years is creating opportunities for members of society to openly state their political aspirations, he said.

Golkar, as the ruling political organization, should help find ways to establish mechanisms in which "political negotiations" in society can take place without harming one party or the other, he said.

"We have to find ways so that in the future, our mode of negotiation can create a win-win situation," he said. "The only party that we have to defeat is people who pretend to accept the state ideology Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution."

Yogie said voters will only completely trust Golkar if it remains intact and united in carrying out its task in the national development efforts.

The three-day meeting is being attended by some 600 leading members from Golkar's branch offices in the 27 provinces, from the mass organizations affiliated with it, as well as representatives from the bureaucracy and the Armed Forces.

The meeting proceeded with four smaller group discussions.

The first group is entrusted with the task of handling organizational matters, such as procedures for recruitment; the second for drawing up Golkar's concepts of development, which are to be submitted and included in the 1998 Guidelines of State Policy.

The third commission is in charge of discussing Golkar's concepts on "the improvement of the quality of nationalism", while the last group is to draw up the organization's political statement, to be issued tomorrow during its 30th anniversary celebration.

More vigilance

Yogie also warned that Indonesia needs to be more vigilant of the onslaught of foreign information and "concepts of life" which are not always suitable here.

He noted that some developed countries have displayed the emergence of "such concepts of life as democratization...human rights, and others which are against concepts that are already established here."

"Those concepts .. may come in the way of our efforts to develop our nation," he said. "However, let's see them more as a challenge ... which we can meet by working... for the good of the people."

Golkar, whose leadership dominates various layers of the administration, won 68 percent of the vote during the last general elections in 1992. The Moslem-based United Development Party (PPP) was a distant second with 17 percent, while the populist Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) took 15 percent.

Regarding the next elections in 1997, Yogie said voters should look at them as an inseparable part of the ongoing process to reach the nation's aspirations.

"(Winning) in elections should not be considered as only a fulcrum of democracy, but also as a way for us to reach those goals established by our forefathers," he said. "This is why we don't want to see it (general elections) dividing the nation into warring groups of people."

"Political parties naturally compete to win people's votes, but victory is meaningless if it is gained through ways which degrade or even slander one group or another," he said.

He advised Golkar and the two other political parties to compete in developing better programs, thus improving the implementation of each of the future general elections.

"Give the public opportunities to rationally decide which party offers programs which are more in accordance with its aspirations." (swe)