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.