PDI supporters slam their councillors

PDI supporters slam their councillors

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Grassroots supporters of the Indonesian Democratic Party of
Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) continued on Tuesday to express
disappointment over the City Council's acceptance of Governor
Sutiyoso's accountability speech.

Supporters said representatives on the City Council had
forgotten the aspirations of their constituents, who mostly do
not want to see Sutiyoso reelected as governor for the 2002-2007
term.

"The councillors are no more than political prostitutes as
they have betrayed the people's trust by accepting Sutiyoso's
accountability speech," Yohanes Yanuardi, the secretary of the
PDI Perjuangan chapter in Makasar district, East Jakarta, told
The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

On Monday, 85 members of the City Council accepted Sutiyoso's
accountability speech with 57 councillors voting in favor of it,
21 rejecting it and four abstaining.

Only one of the 30 members in the PDI Perjuangan faction
rejected the speech.

With the City Council's acceptance, Sutiyoso had cleared a
major hurdle in his effort to seek reelection as the city's
governor on Sept. 11.

The party's grass roots rejected the incumbent governor
because as a former Jakarta military commander, he was implicated
in the July 27, 1996 incident, when some members of the military
and civilian supporters of Megawati Soekarnoputri's rival
Soerjadi, attacked the party's headquarters on Jl. Diponegoro,
Central Jakarta.

The council's acceptance was another harsh blow for them as
they had been disappointed with the central board's order that
all party councillors support Sutiyoso's reelection.

The order, signed by Megawati as the party chairwoman,
divided the 30 councillors of the Jakarta chapter of PDI
Perjuangan, which had previously nominated 11 of its cadres,
including chapter chairman Tarmidi Suhardjo, as gubernatorial
candidates.

The party's central board threatened to punish councillors and
other party members if they refused to comply with the order.

Thomas Resnol, a victim of the July 27 incident from Central
Jakarta, said that Sutiyoso's reelection as governor in 1997 was
a reward from former president Soeharto for his success in taking
over the headquarters of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI)
from Megawati's supporters.

"How could Megawati support Sutiyoso's candidacy while he is
the main enemy of the party's grass roots?" said Thomas, who was
one of the 124 Megawati supporters arrested by the police after
the incident.

He told Megawati that PDI Perjuangan's stance would bring
significant political consequences in the 2004 general election
as the disappointed grass roots would shun the party.

Meanwhile, Kusnanto Anggoro, a political analyst from the
Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said
political conflict within PDI Perjuangan resulted from a poor
election system in the country.

Based on the current system, party representatives in the
House of Representatives or on City Council did not feel they
represented the people who voted for them, but as representatives
of party leaders.

"Therefore people are often disappointed by the councillors
and other legislators as their aspirations are often ignored,"
Kusnanto told the Post.

In a well-established election system, said Kusnanto, leaders
in regional chapters would have a decisive authority in political
affairs, including in the election of regional leaders.

"In that system, the party's central board would only function
as a coordinating body and would not intervene in decisions made
by leaders of the regional chapters," said Kusnanto.

A district election system would help resolve the problems as
the fate of representatives would depend very much on how they
accommodate their constituents' aspirations instead of those of
their political leaders.

"In that system, representatives who ignored people's
aspirations would not be reelected in the following election," he
said.