Presidential selection
Presidential selection
Your editorial Going the extra mile dated Oct. 22, 1999, although beautifully written and sincere, seems to reflect your hopes -- that the purposes of democracy have been well served by the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) in its selection of the new president and vice president -- rather than the actuality of the situation within the MPR.
In your editorial dated Oct. 21, you expressed the hope that in future, the president will be directly selected by the people. In fact, this is the only process accepted as democratic in the international community, and therefore your claim that the recent MPR deliberations were democratic seems to be contradictory. The party with the most votes was denied the right to select the president because of the MPR rules that guaranteed that the people would have little chance of unseating former president Soeharto during his 32-year despotic reign. If the MPR had been truly sincere and proreform these invalid rules would have been set aside before the selection of the new president.
You may have deemed the recent selections democratic because non-Golkar people were given the key positions, when in fact, Golkar were in disarray because of their embarrassment over their totally unacceptable candidates, and therefore had to improve their image by appearing proreform.
Their support of Amien Rais was a clandestine move to partially defang a starving tiger. One wonders just what this marriage of convenience cost Amien Rais in honor and commitment to reform. Golkar don't hand out favors without expecting something substantial in return. Golkar's next move was to champion a presidential candidate who was least likely to energetically pursue the New Order criminals who systematically robbed this nation of its wealth for three decades. Such a pursuit would threaten the wealth and freedom of many high ranking people, including principally Golkar and military figures. Naturally, the peaceable and loving figure of Abdurrahman Wahid (or Gus Dur) came to mind. Given his loving nature, no one in the Golkar faction seriously believed he had the energy and will to bring people he loved to trial, and so, they grasped this last straw to save themselves from drowning.
In all of this, Golkar succeeded in shielding their spiritual and moral bankruptcy from public view by hiding behind Amien Rais and Gus Dur. The Ciganjur Accord had proven not worth the breath it took to expound its "principles".
Their next move, in the face of threatened revolution, was to hastily withdraw their totally unacceptable vice president candidates and reluctantly accord Megawati the consolation prize.
Was this process democratic? I sincerely hope that the rosy picture you have painted of the MPR snake pit turns out to be more true than the horror scenario I have imagined above.
LEONARD JONES
Jakarta