Jakarta – President Suharto said there was no room for political dissent in Indonesia and that critics of his government did not understand the country's political system, The Jakarta Post reported yesterday. "There are people who analyse our 1945 Constitution using a foreign frame of mind," he told a meeting of senior government officials on Tuesday.

He said these critics did not understand the role of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) – where the majority of members are appointed and which meets once every five years, elects a president formally and approves broad guidelines of state policy.

"The assembly elects a figure it believes is capable of carrying out prepared guidelines of state policy. This implies there should be no opposition to any policy as they have been approved by representatives of all the people," he said.

The 1,000-member MPR consists of the 500-member House of Representatives (DPR) and 500 representatives from various government and community bodies appointed by the President.

The MPR has re-elected Mr Suharto five times since 1968. The former army general first took power after the military crushed an attempted coup in 1965 that was blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party.

Mr Suharto also warned that the globalisation of information and economic activity were, in some ways, a "tremendous threat" to unity in Indonesia.

"The free flow of global information has brought people in all countries closer. This enables people to receive foreign values that can erode their sense of nationalism," he said.

"So extreme is the impact of foreign influences in some people they no longer care about maintaining their nation's unity."

The comments come amid a continuing crackdown on dissent which foreign diplomats said was probably ordered by Mr Suharto, who recently threatened to "clobber" anyone who tried to unseat him by unconstitutional means.

Three leaders of the unrecognised United Democratic Party of Indonesia (Pudi), including its chairman, former legislator Sri Bintang Pamungkas, were detained last week on subversion charges which carry the death penalty. Pudi had urged people to boycott the May 29 general election. – Reuter.