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.