MPR to impose limit on presidential term

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)