Subdistrict head election questioned

TANGERANG (JP): About 500 residents of Rawa Rengas village in Kosambi district staged a rally at the Tangerang regency office on Saturday to urge Tangerang regent Agus Djunara to investigate deviations in the process of electing the new chief of their subdistrict.

The residents, whose transportation to the regency office was apparently financed by Uci Sanusi, one of the subdistrict head candidates who failed the pre-ballot screening, believed that the election process was overshadowed by rampant collusion, corruption and nepotism practices.

Uci's elementary school diploma was declared fake by the Tangerang sociopolitical affairs office, which handled the election process.

However, Uci strongly denied that his diploma was fictitious. "It was engineered in such a way so as to prevent me from being elected," he said.

Regency spokesman H.E. Kusnadi deplored the activities of the subdistrict head candidates who were disqualified from the election, particularly those who mobilized large numbers of people to protest.

"Whether the diploma is genuine or not will be checked by the Jakarta office of the Ministry of Education and Culture, which issued the diploma," Kusnadi said.

Rawa Rengas is one of the 119 subdistricts in Tangerang whose head's term of office has recently expired.

While subdistrict heads used to only have to hold elementary school diplomas, they were now obliged to have at least junior high school qualifications in line with the more complicated problems they now had to face, Kusnadi said. (41/hhr)