Govt denies Suwardi's election reward for district chiefs

JAKARTA (JP): The government denied Saturday that Central Java Governor Suwardi planned to promote district chiefs as a reward for their efforts to help Golkar win the general and local elections.

The director general of administration and regional autonomy at the Ministry of Home Affairs, Oman Sachroni, said that Suwardi's plan to promote the chiefs, who are all civil servants, and Golkar's victory in the respective districts were unrelated.

"The district chiefs must have performed well in their administrative jobs, and Golkar happened to win in their districts," Oman said after attending President Soeharto's speech at the House of Representatives.

He said a governor could not take into account political considerations while evaluating the performance of a district chief.

"There is no rule which says that a district chief deserves a special promotion because his or her region favors Golkar," he said.

Oman said other governors were allowed to follow in the footsteps of Suwardi as far as proper administrative evaluation was concerned.

Golkar won 54 out of 80 House of Representatives seats up for grabs in Central Java in the May 27 election, 10 more than in the 1992 poll.

Suwardi drew much criticism in the run-up to the election with his policy, widely called "yellowization", that ordered the province's residents to paint public objects yellow, Golkar's political color.

The controversial governor confirmed earlier this month that he would promote by three grades 100 of the 550 district chiefs, all of whose areas saw Golkar winning at least 90 percent of the vote.

"They deserve this because they brought victory to Golkar. If it was possible, I would promote them as regents," Suwardi said.

In response to Suwardi's move, angry leaders of the United Development Party in Pekalongan planned to also reward the town's mayor and several district and subdistrict chiefs for their part in helping the party win the election in those areas. (amd)