PDI-P serious about interpellation

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) legislators were warned by their faction chief on Wednesday to either support a motion for interpellation of President Abdurrahman Wahid or face sanctions.

Faction chairman Arifin Panigoro insisted on Wednesday that there should be no detractors among party ranks as it was faction policy.

"The interpellation has become the faction's policy and should be supported. We will impose an internal sanction on PDI Perjuangan legislators who do not support it," Arifin said.

The House of Representatives is due to hold a plenary session on Thursday to decide, most probably through a vote, on the interpellation proposal.

Arifin urged all 148 members of the faction to be present at the plenary session.

The interpellation petition has so far been signed by 278 legislators, mainly from the Golkar Party and PDI Perjuangan (PDI-P) factions.

It is known that 124 PDI Perjuangan members signed the petition.

A majority of votes in the 500-seat House is needed for the motion to be accepted.

It is aimed at summoning and seeking an explanation from the President over the dismissal of state minister of investment and state enterprises development Laksamana Sukardi and minister of trade and industry Yusuf Kalla.

Laksamana is high up in the ranks of PDI Perjuangan while Yusuf Kalla is a Golkar Party senior member.

Arifin maintained on Wednesday that the interpellation was not aimed at questioning the President's prerogative to dismiss the ministers, but on the grounds of making such a hasty decision.

"It is aimed at questioning the inconsistency of the reasons stated by the President for the ministers' dismissal," he said.

"It seems that the President has lied," he further remarked while adding that "the President has disappointed the two biggest party election winners by dismissing the two ministers without clear reasons".

Abdurrahman earlier said that the replacement of Laksamana and Yusuf on April 25 was aimed at harmonizing his economics team.

But later, the President, during a closed-door consultative meeting with House leaders, claimed that they were axed because the two were allegedly involved in graft.

The interpellation proposal during its debate in earlier consultative meetings could not be agreed upon. Thus, while a consensus will try to be sought during Thursday's plenary session, Arifin predicted that it would most likely have to be voted on.

In a separate development, the head of the State Logistics Agency (Bulog) Rizal Ramli formally filed a complaint against the DeTak tabloid at the Press Council on Wednesday due to a June report by the weekly titled Sliding Interpellation with Rp 100 million.

"The tabloid has slandered me by publishing an untrue story," Rizal said in a statement.

He claimed that DeTak's report that he tried to bribe 50 legislators in order to halt the interpellation petition was completely untrue.

Rizal expressed disappointment that the tabloid had not confirmed the story with him or his staff before publishing it.

He earlier filed a defamation report against the tabloid with the police.(jun)