RI may learn from foreign examples
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
For the first time in Indonesia's modern history, the country is experiencing a governmental transition after the General Elections Commission declared on Monday Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono the winner of the Sept. 20 election runoff.
Susilo will replace President Megawati Soekarnoputri for the 2004-2009 term.
Political transition in the country has never been well prepared or conducted in an orderly manner, and sometimes involved the use of the military might.
The country's founding president, Sukarno, was officially dismissed in 1967 in the midst a purge initiated by the military against suspected members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), one of the president's political mainstays.
Sukarno's successor, Soeharto, was forced to step down after 32 years in power in May 1998 amid a severe financial crisis and massive student protests and was not prepared to relinquish the reins of power. His vice president, BJ Habibie, assumed power in line with the Constitution.
In the last episode of the country's turbulent political transition, former president Abdurrahman Wahid was dismissed by the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) for incompetence only after two years in office in 2001. The then vice president Megawati took over the administration.
Transition involves a power vacuum during which the outgoing government can no longer carry out all of its functions and the incoming government is not in full possession of power.
In a healthy transition, the outgoing government is considered powerless either because it no longer retains its authority, or does not wish, out of respect for democracy, to make decisions that would be binding for its successors.
Experience from the United States suggests that transition is a cumbersome process and not all turning over of power has proceeded smoothly.
After Abraham Lincoln was elected president with only 39 percent of the vote, outgoing president James Buchanan sat idly by as state after state seceded from the union. By refusing to act, he apparently left Lincoln with only two options: peaceful dissolution of the nation or war.
What president-elects do and don't do during the interval between their election and inauguration will also contribute much to their success as president than perhaps any other decisions made by their administrations.
The unexpected declaration by president-elect Bill Clinton in 1993 to lift the ban on homosexuals serving in the military before he selected all his key defense and national security advisers produced months of backpedaling and drew attention and time away from the rest of his agenda.
In Kenya, the victory of the opposition against the Kenya African National Union, which held a monopoly on power since the country's independence, did not result in the repudiation of the old forces.
In late 2002, the new Kenyan administration did not embark on a witch-hunt against senior officials of the outgoing government. Some of leading officials from the former government even got positions in the new administration.