Time for new national vision, strategy: Mega

JAKARTA (JP): Defying the conservative disposition which many pundits had assigned to her, President Megawati Soekarnoputri on Thursday called for a revamp of the nation's vision and strategy in keeping with the changing times.

"The altered conditions compel us to reorganize and reinvigorate the vision of our future, something that perhaps our own founding fathers never envisioned," Megawati said during a keynote address to a national development strategy seminar.

Changing the nation's vision must begin with amending the 1945 Constitution, she said, reiterating her call to establish a constitutional commission to be entrusted with the task.

She added that the authority to change the country's basic law must remain with the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR).

Her call for a constitutional commission, first broached on Aug. 16, has been lauded by various non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which have been lobbying for sweeping changes to the 1945 Constitution.

They said various amendments introduced by the MPR since 1998 had been guided by the self-interest of MPR factions in enhancing their own power in relation to the presidency.

In response, MPR leaders have insisted that any constitutional commission must work under their auspices.

Megawati's call for a constitutional commission, and now for a new national vision and strategy, has defied pundit's predictions before her rise to the presidency last month. Many observers foreshadowed a conservative leader who would strive to retain as many of her father, Indonesia's first president, Sukarno's legacies as possible, including the 1945 Constitution.

In her speech, Megawati said Indonesia today lived in a world that was rapidly changing, driven by technological advancement as much as by the changing attitudes and expectations of its people.

Changing the Constitution alone would not be enough, she said.

Indonesia needs to adjust and renew its policies and strategies to mobilize all of its resources more effectively and efficiently to achieve a new vision, she said.

Various state institutions must now be revamped in accordance with the changing conditions and demands of the time, she said.

Megawati said there was something fundamentally wrong in the national development strategy, evidenced by the huge leak in state finances, in the poor quality of the country's products and the growing imbalance in the distribution of wealth.

"At times, this has prompted us to ask where we went wrong."

Such questions, she added, "led us to contemplate whether we could think of a new development system, a new method, that is not based on projects or other methods we have used all this time."

Megawati did not spell out the new vision and strategy that Indonesia should adopt today, saying that this was something that the public must work on, through discussions and seminars like Tuesday's gathering.

The seminar was organized by the alumni association of the Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. (dja/emb)