MPR session opens under pressure
MPR session opens under pressure
By Dwi Atmanta and Santi W.E. Soekanto
JAKARTA (JP): When House Speaker Harmoko bangs his gavel and
opens the five-yearly General Session of the People's
Consultative Assembly this morning, the curtain rises on the
immense responsibility that each of the 1,000 legislators bears
on their shoulders.
They will, during the course of the eleven-day convention,
deliberate and endorse the State Policy Guidelines for the next
five years, and elect a president and vice president. Errors and
mistaken decisions will adversely affect the lives of the
country's 202 million inhabitants.
The Rp 44.7 billion (US$5 million) event will deserve a
special place in history by virtue of a different backdrop from
the 1993 session. Then, many people's main concern was whether
vice president-elect Try Sutrisno would eventually replace then
president-elect Soeharto midway through his sixth five-year term.
The 1998 General Session, in contrast, is being held while the
country is buckling under an economic crisis and political
restlessness. Many people ask not only about what will happen
after the legislators reelect Soeharto for his seventh term, but
also what other crises Indonesia will face afterward.
One of the reasons for the restlessness is that in the months
prior to the session, the economy took such a severe beating that
some people found themselves asking, after some 25 years of
relative prosperity, whether they would be able to feed, clothe
and send their children to school tomorrow.
Reports about food shortages in remote areas sneaked into
people's consciousness and left their mark. Rioting and
demonstrations against soaring prices that left at least five
dead were some of the ways people reacted toward the crisis.
Given that the food riots occurred so soon before the
Assembly, the authorities then clamped down on protesters and
attributed the upheavals to "irresponsible groups" seeking to
disrupt the General Session and undermine the government.
There's another element to the session's social, economic and
political backdrop -- namely the unprecedented increase in the
demands for reform.
Granted, there are too many definitions of reform to count,
but, over time, more and more people have spelled it out as
presidential succession and an overhaul of the economic and
political system.
"Seeking economic reform is useless unless it is accompanied
by political reform," one critic said.
There are both local and international parties which wish to
see Indonesia stable out of fear that change means chaos that may
affect not only the region but beyond. Those who seek change, on
the other hand, also draw their strength from a sense that a
growing number of people, both here and outside Indonesia,
support their cause.
In many ways, the General Session is a display of how strongly
entrenched are the political system and mechanisms that President
Soeharto has built over the past 30 years.
Assembly members enter the venue today with full knowledge
that they are not supposed to dissent, interrupt or vote against
presidential and vice presidential candidates Soeharto and B.J.
Habibie.
However, the General Session is but a stage in the nation's
life; it will eventually end. Outside of the renovated House of
Representatives building, millions of people are still waiting
and asking: What's next?
Uniform
The ample experience of holding five conventions under the New
Order is not likely to encourage the People's Consultative
Assembly to break away from the conventional uniformity of
opinion.
This was clearly indicated in that the Assembly working
committee ended in January its three months of deliberation on
the draft of state policy guidelines -- sponsored by the ruling
Golkar organization -- without introducing significant changes
from the previous guidelines.
The formidable Golkar and its allies -- the Armed Forces and
the regional representatives factions -- managed to override
attempts by the minority Indonesian Democratic Party and United
Development Party (PPP) factions to introduce change.
Included in the major decrees completed by the working
committee is one that will give the next president extra power to
take preemptive measures if the country is in danger or the
development programs fail to run according to plan.
Now that the five factions have also unanimously agreed on the
presidential and vice presidential candidates, there will be no
crucial issues left for the Assembly's 1,000 members to debate,
as PPP executive Jusuf Syakir put it.
"Of course the General Session will serve as merely a
ceremony, but should it matter to us?" said Jusuf, who will lead
the PPP's 134-strong team in the quinquennial convention.
"It's like a preparation for a wedding service," he said
recently. "We have to pass a set of traditional and religious
procedures. They may take us a long time, although the wedding
service itself may last just one minute."
Jusuf however does not take it for granted that the session
will run smoothly just because of the preliminary agreements.
"The agreements were made by 90 members of the Assembly
working committee. I believe a lot of debates will still mark the
upcoming General Session because of the presence of another 910
members," he said.
"The (State Policy Guidelines) draft, although it has been
approved already, is not the final product. It needs a second
look," Jusuf said.
Another PPP legislator, Hadimulyo, said further debate was
needed on the question of the basis for long-term development
programs, moving from economic growth to human resources
improvement.
"We have been paying too much attention to economic growth
while neglecting human resources development," he said.
He also called for courage to break constraints that have kept
political organizations immature.
He was referring to the failure of the Assembly to revoke the
controversial floating mass policy which bans political groups
contesting the general elections from campaigning in villages and
subdistricts.
"The policy favors Golkar because the administration personnel
in subdistricts and villages are Golkar cadres," he said.