Jakarta – Indonesian President B.J. Habibie has for the first time in an interview laid out his basic criteria for political parties to qualify to take part in the elections he has promised the nation.
"I have to prepare for the elections," Habibie told the South Korean conservative daily Chosun Ilbo in the interview on Saturday, regarding his current top political priority. He said the criteria, which are still under study, are designed to "make it possible for any man, any group" to take part in the fresh parliamentary polls he has scheduled for May next year.
Habibie, who took over from ex-president Suharto who stepped down amid mounting public pressure on May 21, has partially eased restrictions on political parties. Some 60 parties have sprouted since May, but their recognition is pending a lifting or modification later this year of the Suharto-era law restricting the number of political parties to three.
Habibie said parties eligible to take part in the next elections should have representation in at least 14 of the country's 27 provinces. They must each have the recommendation of one percent of the voters, or about 1.2 million people with every man authorized to recommend one party only.
He said that each party was allowed to accept a maximum of 100,000 rupiah (eight dollars) in contributions from one individual and 50 million rupiah (4,000 dollars) from one company. "If they fulfill these conditions, then they would be invited to contest the elections," Habibie said.
The elections are held to form the country's two legislative bodies, the People's Representative Council (DPR) and the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) which meets every five years to pick a president and a vice president.
Habibie's proposed schemes would bring up the number of elected legislators at the DPR to 90 percent from the current 85 percent, while at the MPR the corresponding figures would be 70.2 percent compared to the current 42.5 percent. The next DPR will have 50 members more than the current 500 but the military's presence will be cut to 55 from the present 75, Habibie said. Under the prevailing laws, the members of the military do not vote or run in elections but are allotted a certain number of seats.
Habibie said that 420 members of the DPR should be directly elected while another 75 would part of the "proportional representation", or the allotment of seats to diminish wide seat disparities between the parties. The MPR membership, currently at 1,000, will be slashed by 300 seats, he said.
The MPR will be composed of the DPR membership and another 81 to represent the regions and 69 to represent non-political groupings, but he said the number of representatives per region, three or five, had yet to be decided. "The 69 will be personalities from the society suggested by the DPR (to the president.) They may be movie stars, scientists, businessmen," Habibie said.
In the current system, the parliament is composed of the 500 DPR members, 251 presidential appointees are alloted between the DPR factions, another 149 are appointees representing the regions and 100 are picked by the president to represent non-political groupings.
Under Habibie's proposed timetable, the current MPR will convene in November to issue the neccessary laws for the elections and the polls will be held in May 1999. The resulting MPR is hoped to be able to convene before the end of next year so that they can pick a president and a vice president to run the country for five year begining January 1, 2000. Habibie, in the interview, made it clear that he hoped "the people" would consider him as a candidate for the presidency, but as a second and final term.
[On August 9, AFP reported that a group of Moslem students and activists launched the "Justice Party" at the Al Azhar mosque in South Jakarta. Headed by Nur Mahmudi Ismai'il, 36, a graduate of the Bogor Institute of Agriculture who now works as a researcher, the party's charter said that the party was a part of the "Order of Reform" which followed Suharto's "New Order" - James Balowski.]