Adianto P. Simamora, Jakarta – With 10 days to go until the presidential election, the rhetoric is turning nasty, with candidates and their campaign teams subjecting rivals to smear campaigns in a last-ditch effort to lure voters.
Leaflets accusing Herawati, the wife of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's running mate Boedi-ono, of being Catholic, and the fallout from the President's claim that the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) is growing overly powerful, are the latest ammunition in the mudslinging.
Yudhoyono's campaign team has called on rival candidate and Vice President Jusuf Kalla to take responsibility for the distribution of the "slanderous pamphlets" during the latter's campaign stop last week in Medan, North Sumatra.
Kalla, however, has firmly denied any involvement in the incident.
"Such a negative campaign was targeted against us," he told supporters during a campaign stop Sunday at Bandung's Gazebo Field. "There are groups seeking to trap us on the leaflet issue."
Kalla's campaign team has reported Rizal Malarangeng of Yudho-yono's team to the police for suggesting Kalla was behind the attempt to discredit Herawati. "On Friday night, we reported Rizal Malarangeng to the Jakarta Police," Poempida Hidayatullah, from Kalla's campaign team, told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
He claimed the police had said perpetrator behind the distribution of the leaflets was in fact a member of Yudhoyono's Democratic Party. Rizal, for his part, said he was unperturbed at being reported.
The third candidate in the race, former president Megawati Soekarnoputri, and Kalla have also been mining Yudhoyono's perceived criticism of the KPK, which played a central role in the prosecution and conviction earlier this month of an In-law of Yudhoyono's.
"We've heard so many statements lately that are critical of the KPK," Megawati told supporters Saturday in her traditional stronghold of Bali.
"I was the one who established the KPK in 2002 and got it up and running it in 2003. Therefore, should I lead this country again, I promise we will have a better KPK."
During campaigning Saturday in Kalimantan, Kalla said he was incensed at Boediono over the latter's refusal to fund the 10,000-megawatt power generation scheme.
"Boediono (as then chief economics minister) refused to provide loans to finance the project. I was very angry with him (at the time)," he said.
Yudhoyono played down Kalla's statement, saying there was no way Boediono had hindered the project. "It's unethical for government officials to publicize suggestions made by ministers," Yudhoyono said Sunday at the Dome Convention Center in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan. For his part, Boediono urged calm over the allegations about him.
Megawati, meanwhile, continued attacking her rivals by promising to revise the controversial pornography law and education entity law, issued under the Yudhoyono-Kalla administration to allegedly draw support from the country's youth.
"My party is the only one that said no to the law. Indonesia is a pluralist nation, comprised of various ethnicities, religions and cultures, such as those in Bali," she said. "So the porn law as it is should not have been implemented."
[Niken Prathivi in Denpasar, Nurni Sulaiman in Balikpapan and Yuli Tri Suwarni in Bandung contributed to this story.]