Five to contest UGM rector election race
Asip A. Hasani, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta
The first rectorial election of Yogyakarta's state Gadjah Mada University (UGM) is nearing the selection date with only five of the 13 candidates eligible to contest in the election.
The five candidates will each present their leadership vision and mission before a number of former UGM rectors on Monday, two days before the university's academic senate convenes again to select three of them.
Earlier on Saturday, the senate picked five of the 13 selected candidates to take part in the election.
Boma Wikan Tyasa, head of the 188-member Senate, and incumbent rector Ichlasul Amal, whose four-year term will end in March, were the strongest of the five candidates.
Boma challenged Amal with 57 votes he secured during Saturday's voting. The incumbent rector only grabbed 41 votes.
The three other contenders were former head of the Civil Servants Administration Body Sofian Effendi, who is director of post-graduate studies in public administration; dean of the faculty of social and political sciences Sunjoto Usman; and dean of the technology faculty Sudjarwadi.
At least 43 senate members were not present in the closed-door selection process. However, secretary of the rector electoral committee Afan Gaffar claimed: "The voting has run very smoothly and was completed within a short time".
All five candidates are graduates of UGM.
The committee claimed graduates from other universities were welcome to contest the rectorship race.
In reality though, it excluded at least two "outsiders" from different colleges in Bandung and Semarang during previous administrative selections.
A recent poll organized by a UGM student body shows that more than 71 percent of the 969 respondents, mostly the university's students, preferred to have a new rector from their own university.
"The poll result makes sense because an outsider could endanger the 'harmony' within the university where people of various ethnic and religious backgrounds study. UGM is unique," rector election committee chief Koento Wibisono told The Jakarta Post.
At least 17 academics had registered with the committee to join the race, but three of them failed to pass the administrative selection process. Former finance minister Bambang Sudibyo withdrew his candidacy for reasons which were unclear.
UGM will be the second state university to hold a rectorial election for the 2002 to 2007 period after the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) voted for Kusmayanto Kardiman as its new rector on Aug. 29 last year.
Rectors had previously been appointed by the education minister with the approval of the president. Under government Decree No. 153/2001, state universities must elect their new leaders democratically as part of the implementation of campus autonomy.
Jakarta's University of Indonesia (UI), Bogor's Institute of Agriculture (IPB), and Surabaya's Airlangga University are expected to follow suit in the near future.
UGM, established in 1949 is the oldest state-run university in the country.
The university currently has around 46,000 students and 2,500 lecturers, including several foreigners.