People told to intensify monitoring of political bills

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesianist Adam Schwarz urged the country's reform forces to maintain their pressure to ensure that the upcoming deliberations on crucial political bills produce laws which are neutral and objective.

While questioning the "legitimate right" of the existing political system, the American political analyst said the country should work with whatever tools it had at its disposal and squeeze the best possible result from them.

"So if sufficient pressure can be kept on the system to ensure the rules of the game are made in a neutral and objective way, the election scheduled for mid next year could very much provide a possibility for political change," he argued during a discussion at The Jakarta Post here on Wednesday.

Schwarz, author of A Nation in Waiting: Indonesia in the 1990s, shot to fame several years ago when his book was banned by the government of former president Soeharto.

He is currently a fellow at the Edward R. Murrow Council on Foreign Relations in Washington D.C.

The political laws he was referring to are the three recently drafted by a team at the Ministry of Home Affairs and currently waiting to be submitted to the House of Representatives.

The three new laws will cover election regulations; political parties; and the structure and position of People's Consultative Assembly and House of Representatives.

They are to replace the package of five controversial political laws passed in 1985 which many observers argue was used to help preserve the status quo under Soeharto's regime.

Schwarz said the success of the reform movement showed that a mass public outcry could have an impact on the political system.

"I think it is urgent for the proreform movement and the community to keep a very close eye on that (the deliberation of the bills) process and to ensure that it produces legislation that paves the way for a neutral election, not one open to being politically manipulated," he contended.

He reiterated that political reform was a long process and that with the resignation of Soeharto the nation had only taken the first steps forward.

"It has to be capped off, probably the less sexy part of the process with doing the nitty-gritty part of creating rules and the institutions that allow for a democracy."

He warned that there were forces out there trying to check the amount of reform taking place.

"Habibie may be one that would really prefer to limit the amount of change from the previous status quo ...

"There are strong forces on the other side that would strive to hang on with to vested interests. However I don't think it's going to be all that easy for them to achieve that," he remarked. "The momentum is still on the side of the reform movement."

Bureaucracy

Speaking of the bureaucracy, Schwarz said that like anywhere else in the world, Indonesia's would tend to be more status-quo oriented. However as a whole it might not necessarily be opposed to reform.

"Those who are would be those higher up in the bureaucracy who actually have positions and power," he remarked, adding that this is one area in which those likely to oppose change should be identified.

Other "high-profile areas" to look at, Schwarz said, were within the Armed Forces and Soeharto's family.

But Schwarz also warned that there may also be a prevailing reluctance in the political process during the coming election. He described such apathy and reluctance to trust the political process as a natural consequence of the length of the Soeharto regime.

"This is one of the legacies of 32 years of authoritarian rule. And quite naturally they will take a very skeptical view of the political process," he said.

Elections, he said, were the end product of a democratic process and not the process itself. (aan)