Golkar helps burnish Wiranto's image
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Cirebon
The Golkar Party has handed out reading material to its campaigners to serve as ammunition to counter political opponents who hope to tarnish the image of its presidential candidate, Gen. (ret) Wiranto.
The former armed forces commander has been linked to a spate of human rights abuses, including the May riots in 1998, the bloody incidents of Trisakti and Semanggi in 1998 and 1999, and the carnage in East Timor in 1999.
The material would also be used by Golkar campaigners to promote Wiranto and his running mate Solahuddin Wahid, a senior leader of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), during a month-long campaign starting Tuesday.
The materials were handed out to 350 campaigners during a training session at the Jakarta Hilton Convention Center earlier on Monday.
Members of Golkar and the National Awakening Party (PKB), which is affiliated with the NU, will campaign in the provinces of Jakarta, West Java and Banten.
Similar training sessions have been held for campaigners due to be deployed to cities in Central Java, East Java and to other islands.
Golkar has also prepared arguments to counter opinion that the candidacy of Wiranto means the revival of militarism and that Wiranto is working to an agenda of the Cendana family -- that of former president Soeharto.
During the training, the campaigners were told that Wiranto was the victim of an international conspiracy.
The campaigners were also told to underline the failure of the current government to protect migrant workers and to save state assets, as campaign issues.
Wiranto said after a meeting with editors of print and electronic media that, although his meeting with East Timor President Xanana Gusmao could not stop the prosecution process, currently in the hands of the country's judiciary on his alleged involvement in gross human rights violations, it could at least show that both sides had started to reconcile.
"The meeting shows that top leaders who were directly involved in the East Timor breakaway have decided to leave the past behind them and start to build new relations without vengeance or retaliation," he said after the talks with editors.
Meanwhile deputy chairperson of the National Awakening Party (PKB) Khofifah Indar Parawansa officially tendered her resignation from the campaigning team of Wiranto because she preferred to remain as the chairperson of Muslimat, a women's organization affiliated to the NU.
Muslimat made a decision recently to remain neutral in the election and be nonactive if its members were in any team set up to campaign for the success of NU members in the presidential election.
In Cirebon, West Java, at least 65 NU leaders from 60 Muslim boarding schools declared their support for the Wiranto- Solahuddin candidacy.
Spokesman Abdul Muhaimin Asad said the support was taken to consolidate an earlier decision of the PKB that the party supported the Wiranto-Solahuddin pairing.
Asad added that the Muslim clerics supported Wiranto and Solahuddin because the General Elections Commission (KPU) had disqualified PKB candidate Abdurrahman Wahid from running for the presidency for health reasons.