The Alternative Candidates for President & VP - 2014

In 2014, Indonesia will hold a General Election to elect members of the national, provincial and district People's Representative Councils, and afterwards the Presidential Election.

According to the Presidential Election Law No. 42/2008, a Presidential Candidate must be nominated by a political party or a group of political  parties that won at least 20% of the total seats in the national People's Representative Council or won a total of 25% of the electoral votes.

In this connection, on 7 January the General Election Commission announced 10 political parties that are eligible to compete in the General Election based on General Election Law No. 8/2012.

Among those 10, only the National Democratic Party is a new party, the others are existing parties i.e. President SBY's Democratic Party, Golkar Party, Democratic Party in Struggle (PDIP, Social Welfare Party (PKS), National Mandate Party (PAN), National Awakening Party (PKB), United Development Party (PPP), People's Conscience Party(Hanura), and Indonesian People's Movement Party (Gerindra).

Currently, President Susilo Bambang Yudoyono (SBY) is serving his second 5-years term, and based on the Constitution he cannot be nominated again in 2014. But until now his Democratic Party still has not announce who will be SBY's successor.

There are some public figures whose names were often mentioned by the traditional mass media as potential candidates, like Golkar Party Chairman Aburizal Bakrie, former President and PDIP Chairperson Megawati, former Vice President Jusuf Kalla, (Ret. General) Prabowo, Chief of the Constitutional Court Mahfud MD.

However, this Sunday I want to write about a very controversial Polygamous person who declared himself as a Presidential Candidate i.e. Dangdut Musician Rhoma Irama.

Last December, the media reported that someone posted Rhoma Irama's name and photo (above - Left) on Twitter micro-blog. Standing next to Rhoma Irama was the very controversial Regent of Garut West Java Aceng Fikri (above - Right) who illegally married Fani Oktora an 18 years old local girl on 14 July 2012 and divorced her via Text Message (SMS) 4 days later because he said that she was not a Virgin.

As shown on the above photo, for the candidacy their names were nicknamed as  RHOCENG 2014 which implied that Rhoma Irama as Candidate President, and Aceng as Candidate Vice President (VP).

The Candidate Presidents and their VPs

On Saturday, 30 May 2009, the General Election Commission (KPU) has officially announced the names & numbers of pairs of candidate President/Vice President who will be running for the Presidential Election on 8 July 2009.
(Photo: courtesy of The Jakarta Post).

The Jakarta Post reported that the result of drawing of numbers by each of the pairs shows that they will be competing as follows:
No.1 - Megawati Soekarnoputri(President) & Prabowo Subijanto (VP)
No.2 - Soesilo Bambang Yudoyono (President) & Boediono (VP)
No.3 - Jusuf Kalla (President) & Wiranto (VP)

According to Kompas, last Friday KPU announced the amount of campaign fund that will be used by the three pairs:
SBY-Boediono: Rp 20.750 Billion; Megawati-Prabowo: Rp 15.5 Billion; and Yusuf Kalla-Wiranto: Rp 10 Billion.
KPU also announced those candidates' wealth as follows :
1)Prabowo: Rp 1.5 Trillion plus US$ 7.5 Million
2)Jusuf Kalla: Rp 314.5 Billion plus US$ 25,668.00
3)Megawati: Rp 256.4 Billion
4)Wiranto: Rp 81.7 Billion plus US$ 378,625.00
5)Boediono: Rp 22 Billion plus US$ 15,000.00
6)Susilo Bambang Yudoyono: Rp 6.8 Billion plus US$ 246,389.00

In compliance with the Presidential Election Law, earlier all candidates have gone through general medical chek-up by a special medical team, and wealth review by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). But considering that all the processes have been completed earlier than schedule KPU has moved the campaign starting day from 12 June to 2 June until 4 July 2009.

With the above announcement, the candidates will now surely sharpen their campaign strategy to win the hearts of the people to vote for them. In this regards, I hope that they would only use fair, peaceful and non violent ways. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

The Murder of a Reporter in Bali

People all over the world are expecting that members of Parliament consists of respectful, good, honest and patriotic persons who have high moral standard and self integrity. That way, they can properly serve the people who elected them as representative in handling state affairs.

In reality, we saw/heard/read news about unlawful conducts of Members of Parliament (MP), many of which have been prosecuted & jailed. The latest one being a candidate MP in Bali i.e Nyoman Susrama, who according to Temporinteraktif, has been arrested by the Police and named as suspect in the murder of a Journalist of a local news paper Radar Bali i.e. Agung Gede Narendra Prabangsa.
The arrest was made 3 months after the Police found the dead body of Agung near the Padangbai sea port on 16 February 2009. Earlier, the Police said they are investigating the possible motives of the murder, the most likely being Agung’s article in Radar Bali about misappropriation of funds in the development of an international kindergarten project headed by Nyoman.

Considering that Nyoman is a candidate in the local Parliamentary election last April, in which his political party won a seat, I hope that the Police would thoroughly investigate whether or not he is really involved in the murder.

Homes for Frustrated Candidates

Today is the last day of campaign for candidates running for the General Election on 9 April 2009. Starting tomorrow there will be a cooling down period during which those candidates are not allowed to talk and/or do anything in public that can be considered as campaigning.

I can imagine that those candidates must have been doing everything they can and spent a lot of money during the campaign period. This is obvious because there are so many candidates who are competing for only very few seats in the parliaments.
According to Media Indonesia, there are 11,215 candidates competing for 560 seats of the People’s Representative Council (DPR), and 1,109 candidates competing for 132 seats of the Regional Representative Council (DPD). Beside that, there are 112,000 candidates competing for 1,998 seats of the Provincial Parliaments (DPRD I) and 1,500,000 candidates for 15,750 seats of the Regional and/or Municipality Parliaments (DPRD II).
Due to these facts, it can be ascertained that most of the candidates would fail, therefore very disappointed or even frustrated.
In order to anticipate this, the Department of Health has asked 32 Mental Hospitals throughout Indonesia to provide treatment for those frustrated candidates. Unfortunately, those hospitals only have a capacity of 8,500 beds.
However, Kompas Newspaper quoted Dr Faried Patuti, a Psychiatric at a hospital in Bogor as saying that candidates who are elected also face the risk of having a mental breakdown too, because he/she does not expected will win. Mental hospitals preparing for those frustrated candidates include hospitals in Bogor, Samarinda-Kalimantan, Grogol-Jakarta. They will be placed in VIP rooms charged much higher than normal patients, ranging from Rp 80,000 to Rp 288,000 per day.

In conclusion I felt sorry for those candidates who are too ambitious to reach their goals which are very difficult to achieve. But I am happy that the Mental Hospitals have made anticipatory preparations to treat candidates who failed to be elected in the general election on 9 April.