Soeharto tells students to study
Soeharto tells students to study
JAKARTA (JP): President Soeharto called on Indonesian students
yesterday to return to class and develop their competitiveness in
order to face the future.
Soeharto also said that university campuses should return to
their original function as learning institutions.
"The President asked that students continue their studies so
they could become competitive people," Minister of Education and
Culture Wiranto Arismunandar said after meeting with the
President at the latter's residence on Jl. Cendana, Central
Jakarta.
"This (competitiveness) is important because otherwise we
wouldn't be able to have national resistance, economic,
political, and cultural resistance," he quoted Soeharto as
saying.
"The President asked me to give special attention to this
matter, to enable the students to learn better," the minister
said. "When education collapses, the nation is also finished. As
educators, we must understand this."
Wiranto reiterated his earlier warning that rectors should not
allow student politics on campus, but said students or lecturers
were free to engage in political activities outside campuses and
in their private capacity.
"I hope the ban on conducting practical politics on campuses
is positively responded to in this development era... I have
asked rectors to make their own judgment (whether certain student
activities constitute practical politics and therefore should be
banned)."
He defined "practical politics" as the activities of a person
or a group to carry out or to influence directly or indirectly
political decision making".
When asked whether the current wave of student protests could
be classified as practical politics, he said: "I never said that
current student activities were deemed practical politics".
Wiranto pointed out he had vast experience in dealing with
student demonstrations as a professor in 1978 and then rector of
the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) in 1988. Demonstrations
at ITB not only disturbed the teaching-learning process but also
damaged the institute's buildings and other materials, he said.
During his term, six ITB students were dismissed from the
school and jailed for three years in 1990 after the local court
found them guilty of insulting then home affairs minister Gen.
(ret.) Rudini during a student demonstration in 1989.
Earlier this month, Wiranto said students might face expulsion
if they continued to engage in practical politics.
Despite the ban, Asman Boedisantoso Ranakoesoema and Ichlasul
Amal -- the rectors of the Jakarta-based University of Indonesia
and the Yogyakarta-based Gadjah Mada University respectively --
said they planned to let students continue their on-campus
demonstrations.
The minister also complained yesterday about the undue media
coverage of student demonstrations, and the scant attention given
to his policy.
"They (the media) just carried out students' demands that the
minister resign," Wiranto said with a smile.
When asked about the students' demand for a dialog with the
President, Wiranto replied: "Actually it is not me who must
arrange that because it (the demanded dialog) has a link with
politics and political supervision. This comes under the
authority of the minister of home affairs".
Minister of Home Affairs Hartono said after meeting with the
President on Monday that Wiranto would play a central role in the
dialog. (prb)