New Jakarta City Council will wipe slate clean

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The composition of the next Jakarta City Council will have a positive influence on the performance of the council and the Jakarta administration, as its members will be more critical.

The Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPUD) ballot count final result confirmed that only 15 of the 75 newly elected councillors were old faces.

Of the 75 seats up for grabs, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) took 18 compared with four previously, followed by the Democratic Party with 16 and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) with 11 (previously 30).

"The new council will be more dynamic as it will be dominated by new faces that are expected to be more critical of Governor Sutiyoso's administration," said political analyst Syamsuddin Harris of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) on Sunday.

Therefore, he added, the new council would perform better than the existing council, which was often alleged to be collusion with administration officials.

Sutiyoso has hitherto been strongly supported by the PDI-P. Party chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri, who is also the country's president, ordered party members to vote for Sutiyoso in last year's gubernatorial election, even though Sutiyoso was implicated in an attack in July 1996 on the PDI headquarters on Jl. Diponegoro, Central Jakarta.

Syamsuddin said that the emergence of PKS legislative candidates -- who during the campaign emphasized the need for clean governance -- was expected to provide a good example for other councillors.

"The new councillors will force the administration to perform better. Otherwise, it will come under attack with strong criticism from councillors."

Jakarta Residents Forum (Fakta) chairman Azas Tigor Nainggolan made a similar comment.

He said that strong criticism would be leveled by most councillors, not only those from the PKS and the National Mandate Party (PAN), as had happened previously.

He added that Sutiyoso would also lose support from PDI-P councillors because the governor was partly to blame for the party's poor performance.

Some PDI-P executives argued that Sutiyoso's many evictions since last year had angered many of the party supporters because the party had made it possible for the governor to be reelected.

Tigor expressed hope that the governor would drop its unpopular policies, particularly evictions, as they had brought only misery to thousands of city dwellers.

"If he doesn't change his policies, Sutiyoso's position as governor is under threat," he said.

Newly elected councillors are also expected to level sharp criticism of the administration's performance.

"If major factions on the council are not happy with the governor's performance, they can reject his annual accountability speech. I think the council may even propose that the governor be replaced," Tigor said.

However, Syamsuddin said that it would not be easy to replace the governor before he had completed his tenure. He pointed out, though, that Sutiyoso would face problems if he failed to perform better, particularly in fighting corruption.