Voters told to back aspirants with visions
Voters told to back aspirants with visions
Kurniawan Hari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Noted scholar Nurcholish Madjid has urged the public at large to
vote for a candidate with a good track record, clear vision, and
high personal integrity in the upcoming presidential election.
According to Nurcholish, who is popularly known as Cak Nur,
this year's presidential election would produce a very powerful
president.
"If the elected president is corrupt, the entire nation will
be corrupt. The president will be so strong that nobody can
control him or her," Nurcholish said in his keynote speech at a
seminar titled "Indonesia 2004, An Economic and Political
Perspective: Toward Recovery Effort" here on Tuesday.
The country will see its first ever direct presidential
election on July 5. The presidential election will be preceded by
a legislative election scheduled for April 5. A total of 24
political parties have been declared eligible to contest in the
legislative election.
Under the presidential election law, only political parties or
coalitions of parties gaining three percent of seats in the House
of Representatives (DPR), or five percent of the total votes, can
nominate a presidential candidate.
Cak Nur, who has been approached by some political parties to
be their presidential candidate, said the country required a
president who was willing to relinquish his or her own interests.
"Democracy is a holy war without bloodshed. It is a real war
to fight egoism, subjectivity, and vested interests," he said.
Cak Nur said the 2004 elections should serve as the momentum
to revive hope for a better nation.
The whole nation, he said, must be responsible and make the
elections successful by sacrificing their own interests.
He also said that the nation must maintain the civil liberty
that resulted from the reform movement in 1998, because it was an
important element of building a transparent and accountable
system.
Sociologist Arief Budiman, meanwhile, expressed concern about
the fact that there was a mismatch between the track records of
presidential candidates and the number of their supporters.
"Cak Nur is a good candidate, at least for me, but the number
of his supporters is small," he said.
Arief, a professor of the Melbourne University, said the 2004
elections would not result in any significant changes. He,
however, suggested that the nation ensure the elections ran
smoothly.
He said that the 2004 elections would only highlight that
democracy was being exercised in the country.
Meanwhile, political analyst Mochtar Pabottingi with the
Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) said that despite the
highly touted reform movement, he doubted that any reforms had
actually occurred in the country.
According to him, there were also indications that remnants of
the New Order regime were attempting to return to the country's
political stage.