Newspaper agents heat up Medan mayoral election

Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan

With Medan mayoral election set to start on Monday, competition is heating up with newspapers distributors and agents taking part in promoting candidates.

On the morning before the election, a newspaper distributor Muin was busy distributing hundreds of campaign brochures with pictures of Medan mayoral candidates Maulana Pohan and Sigit Pramono Asri to his colleagues in Polonia, Medan.

The brochure explained why the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), which supports Maulana and running mate Sigit, rejected the Medan 2005 municipal budget.

The brochure tried to counter a previous statement made by Medan mayoral candidates Abdillah and Ramli in the mass media which stated that by rejecting the budget, PKS did not care about the disadvantaged people of Medan since 80 percent of it was allocated for the poor. The brochure explained why the party rejected the budget since it failed to take the people's interests into account.

The party even included a table comparing the budget allocated for the municipality's five offices in the last five years. The table for the 2005 budget showed a significant difference in the budget allocated for the four offices -- Health, Education, Public Works and Cooperatives -- and the Park Office. In 2005, for instance, the four offices received Rp 62 billion (US$6.8 million) in the budget, while the Park Office received Rp 114 billion.

Some newspaper agents, like Juhardi, found the brochures interesting and inserted them inside the newspapers they were to deliver to their subscribers that morning. Juhardi himself just inserted some 500 of the brochures in his newspapers, saying that he has the right to put the brochures inside the newspapers.

"It's my right because all of the newspapers are mine now, it's up to me what I do with them," he said.

Juhardi said he used to insert various brochures in newspapers that he was selling, charging a fee of Rp 100 for each brochure. He said that 75 percent of the money raised would be split with his newspapers sellers and the remaining 25 percent would be for him.

But this time around, he did it for free. "This is free, I consider it a way of showing my sympathy for Maulana and Sigit. I like the pair but I have no right to vote for them because I live in Deli Serdang regency," Juhardi told The Jakarta Post.

However, other newspaper agents were reluctant to follow suit, since they already have their own preferred mayoral candidates in the Medan mayoral election.

Surya Darma, a newspaper distributor who supports Abdillah and Ramli, considered such a move unethical and that it might indirectly make the readers think the newspapers, which carry such brochures, supported the candidates. And not all subscribers would be happy finding the brochures inside the newspapers, he added.

"Just think about it. What a subscriber would think if he was a supporter of Abdillah and finds a Maulana brochure inside his newspaper," Surya said.

He said that personally, he found the brochure strange because if PKS rejected the 2005 budget prepared by the Medan municipal administration, it meant it did not trust Maulana Pohan, Medan's deputy mayor.

"I'm sure that Maulana Pohan had a role in preparing the budget because he was Abdillah's deputy at that time. So why is the Medan municipal administration given a bad name, as if it is Abdillah's doing," Surya said.

Abdillah and Maulana Pohan were Medan mayor and deputy mayor respectively, and just completed their 2000-2005 term before running for the upcoming mayoral election on Monday, where 13 cities in North Sumatra will hold elections to elect the local heads of government.

When told that some newspaper agents and distributors had inserted campaign brochures in newspapers, leader of the PKS faction at the Medan Municipal Council, Ikrimah Hamidy, claimed he had no knowledge of the matter.

Ikrimah, who also leads the Maulana-Sigit campaign team, said the party never told newspaper agents or distributors to insert the brochures inside newspapers.

"They must be doing it of their own accord. Several newspapers agents asked us for campaign brochures, but we didn't know what they wanted to do with them," Ikrimah said.