Febriamy Hutapea, Pekanbaru (Riau) – The mud slinging between candidates vying for the leadership of the Golkar Party was well and truly thrown into full gear on Wednesday at the party's national congress.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla officially finished his tenure as the party chairman on Tuesday night. The position is being contested by Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Aburizal Bakrie, media mogul Surya Paloh, Yuddy Chrisnandi and Hutomo Mandala Putra, better known as Tommy Suharto. The party congress will vote for its new chairman on Wednesday night.
In the first of the day's scandals, Wednesday morning's headline on Metro Riau, a local newspaper, declared: "Golkar boss candidate allegedly involved in corruption case."
The article said that Paloh was allegedly involved in a graft case connected to the Mobil Cepu Ltd. project. Paloh had reportedly ignored a summons from the Bojonegoro State Prosecutor on Oct. 2, and his failure to appear in court could hamper the investigation process, the paper reported.
But Paloh's team have said they will sue the local paper, asserting that the story amounted to character assisination before the party leadership vote. They have laid the blame on Bakrie's team.
"That's junk news. It's a smear campaign and very embarrassing for candidates like Bakrie to take such an action," said Sugeng Suparwoto, a member of Paloh's campaign team.
Sugeng, who is also a director of PT Surya Energi Raya, said that he had been assured that neither the company or Paloh had been summoned by the prosecutor.
"Our share in the company has nothing to do with the case. The prosecutor has clearly confirmed that we aren't involved in the case," Sugeng said.
Meanwhile, candidate Yuddy Chrisnandi earlier accused other contenders of vote buying. He said that each district branch chairman was offered Rp 500 million to Rp 1 billion to direct votes to a "certain candidate."
"This is from a source who can be trusted," Yuddy said. Yuddy alleged that some branch chairmen who supported him were offered money to back one of the other candidates.
Paloh's campaign spokesman, Victor Laiskodat, denied the accusation, saying that his team never gave out any money to buy votes. "We can't afford to buy the votes. What we offer is the idealism to help this party recover from its critical condition," he said.
The process for selecting the new chairman will commence at 7 p.m. Wednesday night. The vote will go through two rounds. Any candidate that gets less than 30 percent of total votes will be eliminated after the first round. However, if any one candidate secures at least 50 percent of the total votes in the first round, he will automatically be elected the new Golkar chairman.