PPP executives talk on Soeharto's renomination

JAKARTA (JP): Unsettled debates forced executives of the United Development Party (PPP) yesterday to extend by another day their deliberation on candidates for president and vice president.

Both the party's chairman Ismail Hasan Metareum and secretary- general Tosari Wijaya confirmed yesterday that incumbent President Soeharto was on its list of presidential nominees, but the meeting failed to agree on whether to forward only one candidate's name to the People's Consultative Assembly next March.

"We haven't arrived at a conclusion... There are branches nominating their own figures," Ismail said during a break in the leadership meeting.

Soeharto's name has stood out in nominations for the top post. The Yogyakarta branch of the Moslem-based party, however, swam against the current by announcing recently it was nominating the chairman of Moslem organization Muhammadiyah, Amien Rais.

Dominant Golkar is the first political organization to renominate 76-year-old Soeharto, who has been in power for 30 years.

As for the vice presidential favorite, PPP has a long list of choices that included incumbent Try Sutrisno, Ismail and Amien.

Tosari was quick to deny speculation that the meeting was extended because it had reached a deadlock. He said the party leaders just failed to reach "a unanimous decision" in time.

"It is common to have different ideas in such a forum. We are now trying to unify those different aspirations in order to reach a party stance accepted by everyone of us," Tosari told reporters.

The deliberation started over the weekend and was scheduled to end yesterday afternoon.

"Man can propose," Tosari argued. "But we have to acknowledge representatives of the party's branches who have been invited to deliver their aspirations here."

Tosari dismissed the speculation that the heated debates on presidential and vice presidential candidates had split the party and forced them to extend the meeting.

"We just failed to finish as scheduled," he said, adding that the draft of the 1998/2003 State Policy Guidelines and the protracted economic crisis were also highlighted in the meeting.

Ismail said debates on solutions to the monetary turmoil had taken the party's executives to the limit, but still they failed to reach an agreement.

"There have been some recommendations proposed by participating party executives to the government, but we want to make (the party's) advice even stronger," he said.

Ismail said the unsettled debates on economic reform had postponed the announcement of the decisions taken by the party in the meeting.

"We will disclose the collated results of our meeting once we resolve the debate," he said. (amd)