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