Indonesia's Problem-- Failure to Pick Right People for Right Jobs: Megawati

Indonesian Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri Monday said that most of the country's current problems centered at the failure to pick and appoint the right people for the right jobs.

"The complex problems concerning administration, development, regional autonomy, national integrity and social cohesion are partly due to the country's history, but at the same time are also because of our own faults," Megawati said during her closing address at a course in the National Resilience Institute.

"We have been mistaken in setting the rules of the game and we have also been wrong in interpreting the problems and implementing the whole thing. We have also been erroneous in selecting and placing certain persons as well as identifying and setting our priorities in handling problems," she was quoted by the Antara News Agency as saying.

Megawati said that three problems that needed quick handling, namely integrity in territorial, political and social affairs.

"But the problem is that all opportunities and energy are absorbed in a struggle for power instead of working on these crises," she added.

Special MPR Session Only Way to Settle Political Problems

Megawati Soekarnoputri was saying that the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR)'s special session to open on August 1st was the only possible way to settle the present political impasse and various problems in Indonesia.

"The vice president said that we must find courageous solutions to the nation's problems, namely through the holding of the special MPR session," Mardinsyah said.

The vice president also mentioned a number of mistakes made during the 1999 MPR general session which she considered to have caused the present political conflict within the political elite, the chairman said.

Megawati, who is also general chairperson of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said the 1999 general election had proceeded in a fair manner so that the subsequent MPR general session should also have been held fairly in that it should have given the first chance (to lead the government) to the party that had won the election.

PDI-P was the winner in the 1999 election but the MPR general session elected Abdurrahman Wahid as president.

Wahid's party, the Nation's Awakening Party (PKB) only won 10.2 percent of the votes in the election, ranking fourth after the PDI- P (33.6 percent), the Golkar Party (24 percent), and the United Development Party (PPP) (11 percent).






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