Febriamy Hutapea – The three presidential candidates and their campaign teams should stick to campaigning on the issues, rather than attacking each other or defending themselves against accusations based on religion, a political analyst said.

Lili Romli, an analyst at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), said that campaign teams should not use religious issues to attack their rivals, and should not overreact in response to such issues.

"They should handle such issues properly – there is no reason for candidates to get trapped on these matters," he said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his running mate Boediono have been the target of potentially damaging claims related to religion. The first issue was about the candidates' wives, who do not always wear Muslim headscarves.

The jilbab issue was first raised by the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), which claimed that the Democratic Party coalition would lose votes because some voters had gravitated to Vice President Jusuf Kalla and his running mate Wiranto based on the perception that they appealed to some Muslim voters based on their more traditional clothing.

Yudhoyono's campaign has accused Kalla's team of igniting the debate over the candidates' wives.