First week sees candidates unprepared for campaign

First week sees candidates unprepared for campaign

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta

The opening days of the presidential campaign saw the candidates
engaged in an assorted mix of publicity gimmicks and public
rallies, which were overshadowed by occasional outbursts of
intriguing behavior.

Most of the five candidates seemed to suffer from stage
fright, but they can be forgiven for this as the month-long event
is the first presidential campaign in the nation's history.

In the candidates' attempt to capture the hearts of the common
people, Wiranto of the Golkar Party stole a precampaign event by
lunching on the roadside with people, as well as setting up
numerous warung (food stalls) in dozens of towns.

However, the retired Army general and former military
commander ran into trouble when a former aide claimed that
Wiranto had financed the establishment of Pamswakarsa (civilian
guards) to secure the People's Consultative Assembly convention
in November 1998. Wiranto has denied the charge.

On the first day of the campaign last Tuesday, most of the
candidates visited markets in different towns, while making sure
that the television cameras were rolling.

Candidates were soon off to cities outside of Java following
the schedule established by the General Elections Commission
(KPU) to avoid two candidates campaigning in the same province.
In those provinces not visited by the candidates, their campaign
teams organized indoor rallies.

Amien Rais and his running mate Siswono Yudohusodo tried their
hand at driving pedicabs in the Central Kalimantan town of
Palangkaraya last Thursday. The pair also ate bakso (meat ball
soup) with street singers and street children in the East
Kalimantan capital of Samarinda on the same day.

Also on Thursday in East Jakarta, a sports hall where the
Wiranto camp was holding a rally was filled by about 250 people,
barely one-fourth its capacity. The audience of mostly elderly
men and women wore new T-shirts bearing pictures of Wiranto with
his running mate Solahuddin Wahid.

When speaker Slamet Effendi Jusuf said Indonesia ranked 138th
out of 140 countries in tourism, he asked the audience if that
was a good or a bad sign. The response was a resounding "Gooood!"
to the dismay of Slamet, who promptly corrected them.

Last week also saw the incumbent President Megawati
Soekarnoputri of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle
(PDI-P) show the people a different side of her personality. The
usually reticent leader popped up at numerous public events,
including with the mother of Nirmala Bonat, an Indonesian maid
who was tortured by her employer in Malaysia.

She held her first ever press conference with foreign
journalists in Jakarta last week and also gave a number of
television interviews. These attempts seemed to close the gap
with her rivals, who are not at all media shy. Yet the
President's body language gave the impression that she was still
not entirely comfortable dealing with the public and the press.

To be fair, most candidates appeared to be less than prepared
for the campaign while exploiting loopholes in the KPU's rulings.
Examples were the lack of transparency in the origin of donors
apart from precampaign events.

The candidates also seem to have failed to exploit all of the
available venues, as the cancellation of campaigning in North
Sumatra last week attested. It turned out that not all of their
campaign teams registered as required by KPU regulations.

Hamzah Haz and his running mate Agum Gumelar, who are running
under the banner of the United Development Party (PPP), like
other candidates, have set up a campaign team. But at the PPP's
impressive Central Jakarta office, only security guards and a
secretary were to be found.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Jusuf Kalla opened their first
week of campaigning by visiting the eastern-most province of
Papua. The pair promised to create more job opportunities if
elected.

There was some bad news at the end of the week, when the KPU
announced that the official presidential debates that had been
urged by some groups would not be held.

As Indonesia has had no experience in presidential debates,
KPU said, toward the end of the month voters will watch the
candidates being grilled by selected panelists rather than
engaing in a debate on their television sets.