New House members to be inducted in early October
JAKARTA (JP): National Elections Committee chairman Jacob Tobing said on Thursday new members of the House of Representatives (DPR) and the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) would be inducted into office in early October.
He was responding to calls to move forward the schedule for swearing in new legislators and holding the General Session of the MPR following the ruling Golkar Party's expected defeat in the general election.
"So far the General Elections Commission (KPU) has no plan to change the timetable for swearing in the legislators because everything is proceeding smoothly according to the established schedule," Jakob said at the Joint Operations Media Center (JOMC) at Hotel Aryaduta Jakarta.
He said new DPR and MPR members were slated to be installed between Oct. 1 and Oct. 3.
He said that according to the existing schedule, the composition of the regency legislatures would be set on July 12, the provincial legislatures on July 15, the House on July 19 and the Assembly's composition would be fixed between July 26 and July 29.
The KPU has been charged with establishing the composition of interest groups in the Assembly for the 1999 to 2004 period.
Separately, National Elections Committee deputy chairman Hasbalah M. Saad said interest groups whose aspirations were not represented by existing political parties should begin to consider possible representatives for the Assembly.
They should prepare a list of possible representatives and send the names to the KPU, he said. The KPU has not announced a limit on the number of representatives from each interest group, but a total of 65 seats in the MPR has been allocated for interest groups.
The KPU will approve the lists of potential candidates before passing them on to the government for final approval.
The representatives from the interest groups, who will help select the next president, will be selected differently this year than in past election years.
In the past, interest group representatives and regional representatives were appointed by the government. Several members of the military were usually included among the interest group and regional representatives in their capacity as military commanders and governors.
An executive with the National Mandate Party (PAN), Hasbalah, said the KPU had decided the 65 interest group representatives in the Assembly would be selected from religious communities, intellectuals, small-scale business owners, journalists, the handicapped, women and indigenous peoples.
According to the elections law, the 135 regional representatives will be chosen by provincial legislative councils.
Hasbalah said that besides the military's 38 representatives in the Assembly, military members could also be named regional representatives if they were selected by provincial legislatures.
In a discussion on Thursday on the military in Jakarta, participants objected to the possibility of additional military representatives in the MPR.
The Institute for Policy and Community Development Studies (IPCOS), which has organized public information campaigns on the elections, said the selection of interest group representatives and regional representatives should be democratic to avoid friction among various groups.
"Different labor groups, for instance, could object if they felt they were not represented in the Assembly," IPCOS researcher Joe Fernandez said.
Also on Wednesday, Antara reported from Surabaya, East Java, that the provincial administration was considering giving compensation of between Rp 30 million and Rp 50 million to each provincial legislative council member who had served on the council during for the past two years.
The secretary to the provincial administration, Soenarjo, said the payment would be given as compensation for council members' service over the past two years.
The "severance payment" has been approved by the Ministry of Home Affairs, he said.
He denied the payment was related to reports of the legislators' debt to the East Java Development Bank.
Bank president Syamsul Ariefin said he believed the outgoing legislators, who each owed between Rp 25 million and Rp 30 million to the bank, would repay their debt.(rms/anr)