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Indonesian anti-nuclear lobbyists win reprieve

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Digest No. 26 (Indonesian news with comment) - February 6, 1997

Amidst the gloom of Indonesia's authoritarian political system, a ray of light. A government bill to pave the way for the construction of an unpopular nuclear plant in Java was not approved by parliament last December. Instead of being passed into law on 12 December as planned, a deadlock in the committee stage caused it to be held over till this year. The delay represents a small but significant victory for popular participation in decision making.

Anti-nuclear lobbyists can claim much of the credit for the postponement. Fighting immense ignorance among members of parliament, as well as powerful bureaucratic interests, a coalition of non-government organisations had been lobbying in the corridors tirelessly throughout the year. Prominent among the coalition of fifteen organisations is Walhi, the Indonesian Environmental Forum.

Unlike Greenpeace, which enjoys a glamour profile on television in the West, the anti-nuclear case is not well aired in Indonesian newspapers, let alone on TV. Nor has the bill on nuclear energy itself, introduced to parliament late in January last year by the Ministry for Research and Technology, ever been explained in the press.

Yet the anti-nuclear cause is popular. A newspaper survey in June showed well over half of middle class town dwellers in Java reject the planned nuclear power station on their volcanic island.

The Minister for Research and Technology, B J Habibie, is well aware of this popular opposition. He is a good talker who has spent days lecturing parliament on his plans to build a huge complex of between seven and twelve nuclear plants in the Muria area of Central Java. But he has shown no willingness to compromise. In addition, he has enemies within the government bureaucracy. Though President Suharto appears to favour him as his next vice-president, economic technocrats say his nuclear project is expensive and unnecessary. The requirement of parliamentary approval has been the opportunity opponents have been waiting for. Much of the opposition has been aimed at prying the project out of the tight clutches of Habibie's Ministry. For example, in order to be eligible for international technology transfer, the bill provides for a Supervisory Agency to keep an eye on safety. Fearing the Agency will be mere decoration if it stays within Habibie's high-tech empire, parliamentarians pressed for it to be completely independent. They also want any commercial nuclear plant to be more closely regulated - preferably by a new and more specific law than this one.

Toughest of the four fractions in parliament on the nuclear issue has been the minority party PDI. Whilst the leadership of their party was rocked by government interference over other matters, PDI parliamentarians were quietly going about their work, with regular input from lobby groups. It was PDI insistence on clipping Habibie's wings that produced the deadlock.

But members of other parliamentary fractions have also been active, including those from the ruling party Golkar and the armed forces Abri. An Abri member raised the issue of legal liability in the event of an accident. At the moment, the bill makes only the private operator of any nuclear plant liable, and has capped liability in ways that fall below international standards. For example, the operator will not have to pay more than about US$200 million for an accident, and will not have to pay at all if the cause was a natural disaster exceeding design criteria. In other countries the State explicitly offers to pick up the difference between that payment and the real cost to society. Indonesia needs to do the same.

Habibie originally hoped the bill would be passed by mid-1996. Its postponement into 1997 has broken the record for the longest-discussed bill. Perhaps parliament is not always the rubber stamp institution it is often portrayed to be. However, it is obviously not the end of the story.

[Gerry van Klinken, editor, 'Inside Indonesia' magazine, tel +61- 7-3371 3854.]

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