The Hindu : Indonesia's move to reinvent itself

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Aug 12, 2002

International

International

Indonesia's move to reinvent itself

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE Aug. 11. Indonesia's Peoples Consultative Assembly today approved a package of innovative constitutional changes which, if implemented, will reinvent the country's political system itself.

The highest legislative forum, known as MPR in the native parlance, also decreed the establishment of a constitutional commission as the Assembly's latest annual session drew to a close in Jakarta following marathon discussions for over 10 days.

Topping the list of these constitutional changes was the abolition of Indonesia's "praetorian system of governance that accorded a pivotal role to the military and police forces in politics.

With effect from the next general election, now due in 2004, the Indonesian military and security forces would cease to hold seats in the MPR.

This was announced by the MPR's Speaker, Amien Rais, at the conclusion of the Assembly's session today.

He said that "the TNI (the Indonesian acronym for the military establishment) and police will be a professional state security and defence forces and (they will) no longer involve (themselves) in day-to-day politics.

Another mandated constitutional amendment, which is likely to refashion the substance of Indonesia's politics, was the introduction of a system of direct elections for the posts of an executive President and Vice-President.

This new measure is also likely to come into force from the general election slated for 2004. Under the current practice, the MPR itself functions as the electoral college for the posts of President and Vice-President.

While all these statute changes were designed, over a period of several months, to transform the Indonesian polity into a more democratic and people-friendly dispensation, a maverick proposal that the MPR today rejected with an air of finality was the move to introduce sharia laws or the Islamic system of jurisprudence.

As a nation of over 210 million people, Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation.

Since it adopted an independent Constitution in 1945 in the context of the Dutch decolonisation of the erstwhile East Indies, Indonesia has remained steadfast in adhering to largely secular politics.

The latest move by a minority of religious parties to inject religion into politics and recast Indonesia as a virtual Islamic state was defeated quite easily in the MPR, according to those who were privy to the deliberations.

While the non-Islamisation of Indonesias polity might attract considerable attention across the international stage, given the state of contemporary political discourse there, the new constitutional changes constituted the key topic of interest within Indonesia itself.

Summing up the MPRs latest decisions, Mr. Amien Rais said that interest groups (or lobbies) would join the ranks of the military establishment and the police in losing their statutory representation in the Consultative Assembly.

Under the existing system, the MPR consists of all the 500 members of the lower House of Representatives, all elected by the people except for 38 nominees of the military-police network, besides 200 other non-elected members appointed by the President and the Government.

This configuration was worked out to suit the authoritarian texture of administration that Indonesia has lived with for several decades.

The latest changes will now pave the way for a new-look MPR. Following the 2004 general election, the MPR will consist of the House of Representatives, all of them to be elected directly by the people, and a Regional Representatives Council, which too will consist of members to be chosen by the people themselves.

Commenting on the total abolition of the "praetorian system with effect from 2004, the Speaker of the existing House of Representatives, Akbar Tandjung, said this would send out a positive signal for the development of Indonesia as a nation of institutions.

Even as Indonesia begins to break free from its recent traditions of individualistic rule, the military forces would need to pay more attention to professionalism which could be fostered through enhanced funding for the development of necessary skills, he pointed out.

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