By Pip Hinman
Indonesian House of Representatives speaker and Golkar faction leader Akbar Tandjung wants the Abdurrahman Wahid government to ratify the draconian security law which was pushed through a depleted parliament during the last hours of the B.J. Habibie government on September 24. The law was not ratified then due to the tens of thousands of people who massed outside the national and local parliaments across Indonesia.
The Law of Dealing with a Dangerous Situation (RUU PKB), presented by General Wiranto last year, would allow the president and regional and provincial governments to declare a state of emergency anywhere in the country. It also gives the military enormous powers of arrest and detention, as well as total control over the postal and telecommunications systems during states of emergency.
Human rights activists say that the push to get the security law ratified now relates to the government's subsidies cuts to basics such as fuel and electricity, which comes into effect on April 1. Also scheduled for April 1 are mass demonstrations organised by students, workers and the People's Democratic Party (PRD).
Hendardi, chairperson of the Legal Aid and Human Rights Association, and Munir, from the Committee for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), told the Jakarta Post on March 23 that the government should junk the bill. They described it and the 1959 State of Emergency Law as "poison to the people" and designed to repress public demonstrations.
Last year's mass protests prompted leaders of the main political parties then struggling to form the new government, including Megawati Sukarnoputri of the Democratic Party of Struggle, Amien Rais from the National Mandate Party and Wahid from the National Awakening Party, to commit themselves to opposing the law. Just six months later, one of Wahid's closest advisers, Dewi Fortuna Anwar, said that such a security bill was needed to regulate military deployment in a state of emergency. She told the Jakarta Post, "The bill was rejected not because of its content but because it was proposed by the military, whose image was badly tarnished".