Jakarta – The Indonesian Military (TNI) Headquarters is currently drawing up internal regulations or guidelines that will assist soldiers in exercising their right to vote in future elections.
Chairman of a military team tasked with reviewing TNI's political rights, Maj. Gen. Syamsu Ma'arif, said he was working on details of the regulation that would soon be ready for implementation.
"We have completed our survey and we just need to formulate the details," Syamsu was quoted by Antara as saying here Sunday.
He declined to provide details of the planned regulation but said it would be based on a survey recently conducted among TNI soldiers and civilians to measure the military's preparedness in exercising their political rights.
Conducted in 26 provinces, the survey interviewed 200 people in each province, with an equal number of civilians and TNI soldiers as respondents.
Separately, TNI spokesman Col. Ahmad Yani Basuki said the planned regulation would ensure that the freedom to exercise political rights would in no way compromise the principle of neutrality adhered to by the military. The regulation would also help affirm the integrity of the TNI as a state institution, he said.
Yani also said the regulation would not specify when the right to vote would be implemented. "The TNI has no authority to decide whether the right to vote should be used in the 2009 or 2014 elections," he said.
The abolition of the TNI's dual function in 1999 as part of reform measures, cleared the way for TNI members to vote in future elections.
Debates, however, soon raged over when the soldiers would be ready to use their political right, as some feared they would not be able to use their votes freely.
Former TNI chief Gen. (ret) Endriartono Sutarto, who oversaw the phasing out of the TNI's social-political role, said soldiers would be ready to vote in the 2009 elections.
Indonesia's democracy will still be flawed without the participation of the TNI in the elections, he argued.
Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono, however, asked for a longer grace period, saying the public would only be ready to accept TNI's political participation in the 2014 elections.
Juwono said the military could be once again dragged into a political struggle if it jumped into politics too soon. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has said that the TNI must respect democracy by upholding its professionalism.
Speaking during the swearing-in ceremony in February of TNI Commander Air Marshall Djoko Suyanto, Yudhoyono called on TNI leaders not to involve their institutions in politics.