PPP lobbies Megawati to join its campaign
JAKARTA (JP): In a bid to improve its election performance, the United Development Party (PPP) intensified its campaign yesterday to win over Megawati Soekarnoputri to its cause.
The Moslem-based PPP sent Mudrick Sangidoe, its Surakarta branch chief, to meet with the ousted PDI leader at her residence in South Jakarta last night.
Mudrick told journalists that he asked Megawati for a blessing for the many Megawati loyalists wanting to join the PPP in Surakarta.
"I also conveyed Buya's greeting to her," he told reporters. Buya is what PPP chief Ismail Hasan Metareum is affectionately called.
Megawati declined to go into specifics concerning her meeting with Mudrick. She only said that Mudrick was an old friend of hers.
Megawati lost the helm of her party to Soerjadi in a government-sanctioned rebel congress in Medan last June. The government has barred her from running in this month's election.
Her frustrated supporters are split on what they should do. Some have reportedly crossed to Golkar while others announced they would vote for PPP but remain loyal to Megawati.
In what observers see as a clever move, several PPP leaders have offered to try and persuade Megawati to join forces with them.
Senior PPP politician Matori Abdul Djalil has urged his party leadership to "have the courage" to ask Megawati to join forces with them to bolster their election chances.
Coordinating Minister for Political Affairs and Security Soesilo Soedarman called on Megawati's supporters yesterday to vote in the May 29 general election.
"They have the freedom to decide to vote as they want," he said after addressing thousands of Golkar supporters at a rally in Halim subdistrict, East Jakarta.
Armed Forces Spokesman Brig. Gen. Slamet Supriadi said he was not interested in discussing Megawati loyalists.
"Let them mind their own business," he told reporters at the armed forces headquarters yesterday, saying he learned about the Megawati supporters' move only yesterday from the newspapers.
But he said that Golkar, the United Development Party (PPP) and the government-backed PDI leadership under Soerjadi should be wary of the Megawati loyalists' motives.
"Although they are showing sympathy for others, there is no guarantee they will shift allegiance from Megawati in the long term," he said.
Supriadi warned that the authorities would not hesitate to take tough action against Megawati supporters who ventured to disrupt the general election.
Golkar featured State Minister of Environment Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, State Minister of Research and Technology B.J. Habibie and Minister of Manpower Abdul Latief in Jakarta and Bogor.
They all promised that Golkar would strive to create more jobs and make development more sustainable.
Addressing 2,000 Golkar supporters in Bogor, Sarwono stressed the need for the government to protect coastal areas that had been degraded by mismanagement and erosion.
Habibie told a crowd of 5,000 supporters in Central Jakarta's Pejompongan that the government's commitment to promoting technology had made Indonesia one of the world's few aircraft makers.
"We are now on a par with other advanced countries in aircraft technology," he said to the cheering crowd.
"Even advanced countries like Japan, or new emerging economic forces like South Korea and China do not have their own aircraft industries," he said.
Minister of Manpower Abdul Latief told thousands of Golkar supporters, mostly laborers, in Pulomas, East Jakarta, that Golkar would continue to create more job opportunities in the next five years. (24/har/ahy/imn/rms)