More speed needed
Even as officials are straining to finish the vote count for last Monday's general elections, public calls to speed up the election of a new President are growing. The obvious reasoning is that waiting until the end of October for a new President and Vice President to be elected, as agreed by President Habibie and the House of Representatives (DPR) leadership last year, would leave the country for too long with a lame-duck government -- a situation which the country can ill afford given current conditions. This is all the more true since the Habibie government is seriously lacking in both legitimacy and credibility.
However, rational as the argument may be, anyone who cares to observe the confusion accompanying the execution of last Monday's accelerated general election -- the original plan was for it to be held only in 2002 -- would understand the hurdles and pitfalls that are involved in speeding up such a democratic process, and even more so given that Indonesians have for more than 30 years missed any experience with multiparty democracy.
Under the Constitution, the President and Vice President are elected by majority vote by the People's Consultative Assembly, or MPR, which, as the repository of the people's sovereignty, is Indonesia's supreme law and policy-making body. Before it elects a President and Vice President, this assembly must first draft whatever decrees are relevant to the situation and draw up a broad outline of policies for the chief executive to implement during the five years that he, or she, is in office. This, in essence, is the task that awaits the nation's highest legislative assembly as far as the process of electing a chief executive and his deputy are concerned.
But since the MPR is made up of all the 500 members of the House of Representatives (DPR) plus 200 more representing the country's 27 provinces and various community groups, both the DPR, being the national legislature, and the 27 provincial legislatures must be in place before the MPR can be formed and convened. Hence the importance of putting more speed into the counting of last Monday's ballots, including the fixing of disputes and complaints, to make sure that the deadline of June 21 is met for the announcement of the official count of the ballots and the allocation of seats to the political parties in both the national and provincial legislatures.
Some observers are optimistic that it may be possible to convene the MPR as early as August -- two months earlier than scheduled -- provided that the final results of Monday's ballot can be available according to deadline. This, though, may be easier said than done given the country's geographic make-up and the inexperience of the manpower available to administer and supervise the process. Also, the fact that no single party is likely to win an absolute majority in the new parliament obviously can make things a good deal more complicated than they already are.
In any case, the sooner a new government is installed, the better it will be for the country. Given the state of affairs this country is in at present, there is no time to be lost to begin putting things in order. An independent and incorruptible judiciary must be established to ensure legal certainty and the rule of law for business and for the citizenry at large. The state bureaucracy must be thoroughly cleansed and streamlined. Laws must be drafted and passed to prohibit a return of autocratic rule and to ensure that the government remains accountable to people. The list of jobs to accomplish could continue.
At this point of the process, the positive market reaction to the first tentative election results appears to indicate that a speedy establishment of a responsible reformist government is indeed what market players are waiting for. It would be a pity if the momentum is lost.