Students want rerun of gubernatorial election
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.