Jakarta – The Regional Representatives Council (DPD) and political parties at the House of Representatives have yet to reach an agreement over the composition of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) speaker posts.
"What we have agreed so far is that members will choose in packages of MPR speaker post combinations. However, we have yet to reach an agreement over the posts' composition," newly elected DPD Speaker Irman Gusman told The Jakarta Post on Friday.
Irman said the DPD members wanted a clear rule that the five MPR speaker posts must consist of a mixed composition, with elements from both the House and the DPD in the proportion of 3:2.
But the House parties insisted this fixed proportion was not needed, and this should be based on a recent Constitutional Court's ruling, without neglecting the DPD.
Several DPD members recently requested a judicial review on the Legislative Body Composition Law to the Constitutional Court. DPD members wanted that the rule requiring that the MPR main speaker post be automatically given to the House, to be removed.
The Constitutional Court agreed, but consequently the rule that two deputy speaker posts would automatically go to the DPD was also removed. That mean't that the DPD might not even get a single speaker post.
This could arise if the election of MPR speaker posts went to a vote as DPD members are outnumbered five to one by House legislators.
A member of the Democratic Party faction at the House, Ruhut Sitompul, said that his faction insisted to give the DPD only one speaker post, because it wanted fair power sharing with its coalition partners.
"We want to give one of the four deputy speaker posts to one of the members from the National Awakening Party (PKB)," Ruhut said.
"Our other coalition partners – the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the National Mandate Party (PAN) and the United Development Party (PPP) – have already earned their share of the lawmaking bodies' speaker posts," he added.
PKS Secretary General Anis Matta has been officially named as one of the House deputy speakers along with Marwoto Mitrohardjono from PAN. The former chairman of the PPP faction, Lukman Hakim, has also been named as the party's nominee for one of the MPR deputy speaker posts.
Ruhut confirmed the Democratic Party would support Taufik Kiemas of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) to become the next MPR main speaker.
The endorsement of Taufik, whose wife, Megawati Soekarnoputri, is PDI-P Chief Patron, the arch rival of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has caused some discomfort within the PKS camp.
PKS Deputy Secretary General Fahri Hamzah said that Yudhoyono should have supported Hidayat Nur Wahid, former PKS president, to continue as MPR speaker. The promise to support this extension was made before the July presidential election, which Yudhoyono won by defeating Megawati.
However, Ruhut played down Fahri's remarks and said the PKS should learn about political dynamics. "In politics, everything changes constantly. We cannot depend only on promises. Besides, the Democratic Party aims to embrace everyone," he said.
The election of the MPR speakers is scheduled to take place today at 9:00 a.m. (hdt)