Soeharto warns of destabilizing interest groups
JAKARTA (JP): President Soeharto warned the public yesterday of interest groups exploiting socioeconomic disparities to achieve their political ends.
"The efforts to improve the distribution of development gains have been increasingly successful. But it's undeniable that disparities are still common," he said.
The President made the remarks when addressing participants of a national leadership meeting of former student activists grouped in Laskar Ampera Arief Rachman Hakim at the presidential palace.
Soeharto said that the interest groups mean to undermine Indonesia's unity on the pretext of defending the poor.
"They exploit discontented laborers, peasants and impoverished communities in urban centers to serve their own interests," he warned.
Laskar Ampera Arief Rachman Hakim is part of the so-called Generation of 1966, which played a pivotal role in the emergence of the New Order Government under Soeharto. Their demonstrations in 1966 forced President Sukarno to step down and make way for Soeharto, then an Army general.
The organization is named after Arief Rachman Hakim, a student leader killed in one of the demonstrations. He became a martyr and a rallying point for the students.
Several of the former student leaders now hold senior posts in the cabinet and political organizations.
Present at the audience with the head of state were the organization's top leaders Cosmas Batubara and Akbar Tandjung.
President Soeharto also warned that in Indonesian culture, a mass rally is not an appropriate way to forward demands because it is not only against the spirit of musyawarah, deliberation for consensus, but can also provoked mass chaos.
"Therefore I call on the public to be mature. All differences in opinions or interests should be settled in the spirit of musyawarah."
He said that since independence in 1945, Indonesia has survived various threats of disintegration from both outside and within the country.
He stressed again the need for all Indonesians to uphold the state ideology Pancasila which has proven an effective glue to hold together the numerous ethnic groups with different cultural and religious backgrounds.
The President pointed out that whenever Indonesia adopted ideologies other than Pancasila, it was riddled by political strife which threw the economy into chaos.
"Now that we enjoy political stability, Indonesia can carry out development for its citizens' prosperity," said Soeharto, who has been in power for over 30 years.
Laskar Ampera Arief Rachman Hakim chairman Djusril Djusan said that the meeting, scheduled to run until Oct. 10, is being attended by about 500 activists.
Djusril called on the government to speed up the drafting of the internal security act to prevent the recurrence of riots like those that rocked the capital on July 27.
The July riots, which claimed five lives and caused damages of about US$85 million, were sparked by the violent takeover of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) headquarters by a government- sanctioned rebel faction.
The government has since accused the little-known leftist Democratic People's Party (PRD) of inciting the riots. A dozen of its key activists have been detained and they face subversion charges. (imn)