Golkar's support for Wiranto is questioned

Ridwan Max Sijabat and Kurniawan Hari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

After two weeks of the presidential campaign, Golkar leaders have urged party executives to show their support for their candidate Gen. (ret) Wiranto and running mate Solahuddin Wahid.

Sparsely attended campaigns have raised questions about whether the party leadership is living up to its pledge it would go all out to have Wiranto elected.

Golkar leaders last week did not seemed prepared to consider a possible lack of genuine public support for their candidate. The likelihood the party has to carefully manage funds to mobilize support after spending much money on costly TV commercials is one explanation for the lackluster campaigns.

Another is that Golkar is still divided after Wiranto's shock win at the party's presidential convention, with the supporters of rival candidates unable to get over their disappointment.

"Why should I support Wiranto now?" said one party executive who said he remained loyal to defeated presidential candidate, party leader Akbar Tandjung. Akbar, meanwhile, has been seen at many of Wiranto's rallies across the country.

On Sunday, the only opportunity for Wiranto to hold an open air rally in the capital, the Bung Karno Sports Stadium saw less than half of its 100,000 seats occupied. Earlier Golkar campaigns had seen much larger turnouts.

"If Golkar wants to continue existing given its humble victory in the legislative election, it must back Wiranto; he's the only one who can boost the party's standing if he wins the presidential race," Andi Matalatta, a Golkar executive, said last week at the party headquarters. He was speaking on the sidelines of a party meeting to evaluate the first weeks of the month-long campaign.

Golkar edged past the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) to take the largest share of the vote in the April legislative elections and more than 30 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives (DPR).

Matallata and others point to "lack of strong coordination" among three campaign divisions -- the national team, Wiranto's "Imperium Team", named after the South Jakarta building where it is based, and the team of the National Awakening Party (PKB), of which Solahuddin is an executive.

Matallata said he and other party leaders had repeatedly warned against fragmentation in the party because of a "lack of support of Wiranto". Wiranto, whose career has largely been spent in the Indonesian Military (TNI) is considered a newcomer to Golkar. Another executive said "not all players in the national team are determined to win the presidential race."

Although all political parties nominating candidates for the July election have had little time to prepare their campaigns, Golkar is easily the party with the best resources after 32 years in power during the New Order regime.

However representatives of the regional campaign teams have said they were largely left on their own to produce campaign paraphernalia. A few said they were not even involved in Wiranto's rallies in the regions such as in Banten and Riau.

"The leader of Golkar's regional chapter in Banten had no idea about Wiranto's campaign ... Yet their campaign paraphernalia was seen in many strategic places -- it was clearly the work of Wiranto's campaign team," a Golkar source said.

Yet a source in Wiranto's team said Wiranto was aware of Golkar's "half-hearted support" and had entrusted his own team to prepare all campaign activities. "So far only Wiranto's success team has worked hard to arrange campaigns and Golkar has contributed hardly anything to cover the costs," he said.

Party executive Bomer Pasaribu said, "It's not realistic to ask former convention participants such as Surya Paloh, Aburizal Bakrie and Prabowo Subianto to support Wiranto ... they've already spent tens of billions of rupiah on the party's convention," he said of Wiranto's rivals who lost the convention.

Bomer said "a little disharmony" among the campaign teams was also because the coalition between Golkar and its former rival, the PKB, was only based "more on strategic and short-term interests" rather than similarities in ideology.