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.