Power sharing

Power sharing

From Republika

In the recent Annual Session of the People's Consultative Assembly, President Abdurrahman Wahid, or Gus Dur, has shown how clever he is in forming his power-sharing and compromising policy. It is feared that his policy will sacrifice the existing state system. We will soon enter the era of horse trading, i.e. the second version of a new configuration with the old machine and method.

Abdurrahman has succeeded in persuading the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) and Megawati to compromise with a new configuration: Abdurrahman to be head of state and Megawati head of administration. But Abdurrahman remains the supreme leader since the presidential Cabinet system requires that the president is maintained as the foremost responsible person under Indonesia's Constitution.

Two things are very hazardous to Abdurrahman's trap. First, his intense determination to remain in power has forced the state system to be "translated" under a momentary interest, i.e. to accommodate Abdurrahman's incapability by sacrificing the prevailing system. If this kind of solution is made a tradition, this nation will repeat Soeharto's way of interpreting the Constitution in line with his interests, enabling the president to create a more operational legal apparatus for backing his interests, for instance by producing laws, presidential decrees, ministerial decrees and the like.

Second, the Assembly has again become Abdurrahman's plaything. So the Assembly needs to think hard and respond to this problem more firmly in compliance with the people's message entrusted to it. This letter serves as a reminder to Amien Rais not to get re- trapped by Gus Dur's "trick" regarding power sharing by making Amien Rais take part in the administration's disorderliness because of the "seats" allocated to his group in the Cabinet.

The maneuver is something that hinders Amien Rais' role and the Assembly members from controlling the government, something which doesn't differ from the New Order's concept where the Assembly was reduced to a "rubber stamp" of executive power by Soeharto. Amien Rais has betrayed the system. The Assembly which should have been on the side of the people and not on the government's, is an institution which has turned noneducative in people's eyes. People can't differ the Assembly in the New Order era from the current one chaired by Amien Rais, which could still easily be made a fool by Abdurrahman.

JUSTIANI

Jakarta