Newspaper agents heat up Medan mayoral election

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.