Senior officer gets marching order over Al-Zaytun affair

Senior officer gets marching order over Al-Zaytun affair

Tiarma Siboro and Nana Rukmana, Jakarta/Indramayu

A middle-ranking military officer was discharged on Wednesday
for involvement in the illegal mobilization of voters to the
advantage of candidate Gen.(ret) Wiranto.

Lt. Col. E was said to have been involved in the deployment of
21 military vehicles carrying thousands of civilians to the
Al-Zaytun Islamic boarding school in Indramayu regency, West Java
on Monday.

The decision to discharge the officer was taken immediately
after the West Java Election Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu)
discovered an unusually high number of voters had come to cast
their ballots on the school grounds -- almost 25,000 compared to
11,000 in the April legislative election.

It was not clear whether the local election committees had
accepted additional voters or whether the voters had cast their
votes more than once. Based on regulations each polling station
can accommodate a maximum of 300 registered voters.

The Indonesian Military (TNI) headquarters also imposed
administrative sanctions on 20 civil servants working at the
headquarters for having used the vehicles for business purposes.

"TNI headquarters regrets the incident because it happened
amid military efforts to remain neutral in the election. The use
of the vehicles also violates military regulations," the TNI said
in a statement on Wednesday.

"But what we regret most is that the vehicles were used to
mobilize people to vote at Al-Zaytun, for a certain presidential
candidate."

Gen. (ret) Wiranto and Solahuddin Wahid, the ticket from the
Golkar Party, garnered a total of 24,794 votes in the polling
stations located in Al-Zaytun.

According to the statement, a man named Emut Muhtar, called a
civil servant named Isna and asked whether he could rent 21
vehicles to transport local residents to the Islamic school
complex to participate in a prayer gathering.

Emut paid Rp 940,000 (US$94,949) for each bus and Isna, along
with 20 other civil servants provided 21 buses that drove the
passengers to the school on July 4.

The buses picked up passengers from three locations in South
Jakarta and dropped them at Al-Zaytun. The drivers returned to
the school complex late on July 5 to transport the passengers
back to Jakarta.

"The TNI has deployed a team nationwide to monitor the
neutrality of soldiers during the elections and to record any
violations of the TNI chief's instruction," said the statement.

It referred to an earlier instruction issued by TNI Chief Gen.
Endriartono Sutarto.

Meanwhile, 13 journalists complained to the police after being
expelled by Al-Zaytun executive Abdul Halim.

"Al-Zaytun officials invited us to attend a press conference
on the issue. They were initially polite, but inspected us one by
one before we entered the complex. Then suddenly Abdul Halim
asked us to leave without a valid reason," the journalists said
in their report.