MPR to impose limit on presidential term

JAKARTA (JP): The five factions of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) agreed on Monday that the special Assembly session planned for November should impose a limitation on the presidential term and abolish the president's extraordinary power granted by the last session.

The team of assistants to the body's working committee (BP- MPR) told a media briefing it had also recommended that the committee deliberate in its next session set for Sept. 10 to Sept. 29 four other MPR draft decrees.

They are draft decrees on the MPR's internal rules, on the "main tasks" of incumbent President B.J. Habibie and his cabinet until the end of 1999, the State Policy Guidelines, general elections, and the MPR special session.

Team leader Achmad Rustandi said the team had proposed to the BP-MPR -- a body that is preparing the agenda for the upcoming Nov. 10-Nov. 14 MPR special session -- that it deliberate all the draft decrees.

Roestandi did not explain how the factions came to agree on the agenda, but BP-MPR chairman Poedjono Pranyoto -- who attended the news conference -- said the factions "just found similarities" in their proposed agendas.

The presidential term limitation proposal looks likely to answer public calls for the MPR to act in this field as the 1945 Constitution has been criticized for being "too vague" in regulating the issue.

The Constitution's Article VII only states that the country's president could be "elected again" after his or her first term, without citing how many times.

The extraordinary power that the team referred to was the controversial MPR Decree No. V/1998 that gives the president the right to take preemptive security measures "to safeguard the development and the state ideology Pancasila".

Rustandi, from the Armed Forces (ABRI) faction, however, cautioned that "there are possibilities these (proposals) could be scrapped or added to (by the BP-MPR)."

Assistance Team member Tosari Widjaya of the United Development Faction (PPP) added that the proposals agreed by the team would be debated again during the upcoming BP-MPR meeting. The Assistance Team members are also BP-MPR members.

Rustandi said the six agenda items were picked from the 20 proposed by the MPR factions -- ABRI, PPP, Golkar, the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) and the regional representatives.

"The rest of the proposed agenda items haven't been thrown away just like that, factions can still propose them in the upcoming BP-MPR meeting," Roestandi said.

Among the other proposed agendas, according to Rustandi, were draft decrees on Soeharto's accountability, on Habibie's appointment as president, on the scrapping of a decree on the need for a referendum should the nation want to change the Constitution, on the abolition of the subversion law, and on human rights protection. (aan)