Supporters protest Jefri's dismissal
Supporters protest Jefri's dismissal
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
More than 100 people claiming to be religious and community
leaders from Kampar regency, Riau, met with the House of
Representatives's Commission II on home affairs on Thursday to
protest the recent dismissal of Kampar regent Jefri Noer, which
they said was a result of political engineering.
Zamzami, who represented the protesters said they rejected as
invalid the Kampar legislature's decision to dismiss the regent
and his deputy A. Zakir.
"The teachers rally was engineered by certain parties in the
local political elite because a majority of people living in
Kampar do not support the regent's dismissal," he said.
The regental legislative council agreed unanimously to dismiss
the regent and his deputy on Feb. 21 after a series of massive
rallies that involved tens of thousands of teachers in the
province. The rallies were triggered by the expulsion from a
meeting of a senior high school principal who questioned the low
education budget for the regency in the 2004 fiscal year. The
regent's action was considered an insult to the teaching
profession.
It was the second time the regency legislative council
recommended that the home minister dismiss the regent after Jefri
was believed to have used a fake senior high school certificate
to meet administrative requirements to run in the regental
elections in 2002. Jefri ignored a no-confidence motion by the
regency legislature and the home minister decided to defend the
regent to prevent similar incidents from happening in other
regions.
Home minister Hari Sabarno who has the authority to fire
regional heads has barred the regent and his deputy from making
decisions on important matters while a team from the home
ministry are carrying out an investigation into the case.
Zamzami, also a Muslim cleric, warned of conflict between the
supporters of Jefri and those who wished to see him dismissed.
"If the home minister listens to the regental legislature's
recommendation, conflict will be inevitable and it will be a bad
precedence for other regencies," he said.
In a related development, the local chapter of Golkar Party
has recommended that Golkar's central committee pull out two
legislators who failed to show up when the regency legislature
conducted a plenary session to determine Jefri's fate on Feb. 21.
Secretary of the Kampar Golkar Party DPD, Syafrizal said in
the regency town of Bangkinang on Thursday, that in the plenary
session that took place on Wednesday, the majority of Golkar
supporters in the regency had demanded that the two legislators
be withdrawn from the regency legislature.
Syahrizal was referring to Zen Arif and Zen Simin who were
absent from the plenary session for unspecified reasons.