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)