Jakarta – Students in several Indonesian cities held protests to reject an upcoming special session of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) and its plan to assure parliamentary seats for the military, reports said Friday.
Hundreds of students gathered at the state Indonesia University here before attending Friday prayers to reaffirm their stance on the November 10-13 session designed to pave the way for elections in 1999. The students said that as the government planned to go ahead with the special session despite protests, the MPs should be more proactive in accommodating and fighting for the people's aspirations.
"We hope the people's sovereignty exercised by the MPR will not be used to meet the interests of a small group of society and sacrifice those of other larger groups," one of the students who identified himself as Dicky, said. The students, however, rejected the presence of the military in the lower house, saying all MP's should be elected through polls.
A working committee of the MPR, preparing the decrees to be approved by the body, has already agreed to allow military representation both in the lower and upper houses, even though a draft bill regulating the matter has still to be debated in the lower house. The military has 75 of the 500 seats in the lower house. The government of President B.J. Habibie has, since taking over from former president Suharto in May, promised to cut the number to 55.
Thousands of students on Thursday held a peaceful protest at the Central Java provincial parliament in Semarang to protest the special session which they saw as engineered by forces loyal to Suharto, the Kompas daily. The protesters also demanded that the MPR put an end to the military's socio-political role, including in the legislature.
Later on Thursday, hundreds of students from at least five student forums also protested in Semarang, but to call for the nation to remain united, the daily added.
In Jakarta on Thursday, some 100 students were prevented from approaching the national parliament by a thick cordon of security personnel. The students also aired their rejection of the special session and called for an end to the military's role in politics.
Some 300 other students rallied on foot and aboard buses at a busy roundabout in central Jakarta while about 100 others held a separate rally at the park where the Indonesian independence from the Dutch was proclaimed 55 years ago. Both groups protested the special session and demanded the military quit politics, the daily said.
In Surabaya, the capital of the province of East Java, hundreds of students took the same demands to the streets in front of the district parliament there.
A similar demonstration took place in Tasikmalaya, West Java where hundreds of students rejected the special session, demanded the revocation of the military's political role accorded to it by law, and sought a speedy handling and an end to a wave of mysterious killings in East Java.
Students have vowed to protest the session, saying it is merely a Suharto body that was sure to preserve the status-quo. But other groups, mostly Moslems, have also aired support for the special session and warned that they were prepared to face anyone trying to disrupt the meeting. In one of the largest recent shows of force for the session, tens of thousands of Moslems gathered at a sport stadium here on Thursday.
"There will be no days without demonstrations," the head of the national police, Lieutenant General Rusmanhadi forecast on Wednesday. The military have responded by martialling 30,000 police and troops, some 16,000 of them to be deployed in the vicinity of the parliament here. They have said 120,000 civilian volunteers will assist in keeping peace in the city.