Golkar helps burnish Wiranto's image

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.