Students want rerun of gubernatorial election

Yongker Rumthe, The Jakarta Post, Manado

An alliance of student associations in Gorontalo and North Sulawesi has called on the central government to annul the results of the recent gubernatorial election in Gorontalo on the grounds that they were not legal.

The Student Solidarity for Anti-Establishment (Gasak), the Forum for Gorontalo Students (FMG) and the Gubernatorial Election Supervisory Committee said the Gorontalo provincial legislative council should hold another gubernatorial election because the previous one was not valid.

Rusliyanto Monoarfa, spokesman for the student associations, said Minister of Home Affairs Hari Sabarno should annul the results of the recent gubernatorial election, saying it had not been run according to the law.

"Most people in Gorontalo do not know Fadel Muhammad and he did not present his vision and mission and the legislative council did not examine whether Fadel and other candidates met official and administrative conditions required by the law.

"Fadel has lived in Jakarta for a long time and does not know the province's real condition," he said in a press conference here on Monday.

The central government has yet to decide whether to accept Fadel's victory in the gubernatorial election or not, as eleven legislators from the local chapters of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) and the Golkar Party have called for a new poll.

The chairman of the provincial legislature, Amir Piola Isa, has called on the home affairs minister to swear in Fadel as the first governor of the province to avoid confusion among the local people.

Rusliyanto said the recent gubernatorial election breached Government Regulation No. 151/2000, which requires gubernatorial candidates to meet all legal and administrative requirements and to present their vision and mission to the provincial legislature before a gubernatorial election can be conducted.

"Besides, it was political engineering when the provincial legislature made several changes to its internal rulings to allow it to conduct the gubernatorial election," he said.

He said the students would continue to hold demonstrations both in Gorontalo and Jakarta to demand another gubernatorial election if the central government accepted Fadel's victory.

He added the students had sent their objections to the conduct of the election to the home affairs minister, the Supreme Court and the House of Representatives' Commission II on legal and home affairs.