JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com - Vice presidential aspirant Wiranto has called on the people to base their decision to vote for a leader on qualification rather than place of origin. "They should vote for a leader based on his or her qualifications, rather than their place of origin," Wiranto said at Halim Perdanakusuma airport before leaving for a series electoral campaigns in Cirebon and Purwokerto on Friday.
Wiranto, the running mate of presidential candidate Jusuf Kalla, added that only a leader with quality and capability could solve the nation’s problems, not on the basis where they came from. Nominated as vice presidential candidate by the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura), Wiranto said he deplored a statement made recently by Andi Malarangeng of the Democratic Party.
Although Malarangeng’s statement was the Democratic Party’s internal affair, Wiranto said the remark was deplorable. "Just to support a presidential candidate, lest an intellectual loses his intellectualism," Jusuf Kalla’s running mate said.
Malarangeng, himself is from South Sulawesi, said recently that it was not yet the time for people from South Sulawesi to become a president because the Bugis Makassar ethnic was very dangerous for a pluralistic nation. His statement was immediately protested strongly by thousands of people from various groups of the community in Makassar on Thursday.
The people, grouped in South Sulawesi People for Anti Racism, staged a protest rally at Mandala Monument in Makassar on Thursday and demanded Malarangeng to ask for an apology to the South Sulawesi people. Subhan Djaya Mappaturung, the spokesman for the protesters, said the statement made by Andi Malarangeng, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s spokesman, was unethical and in contradiction to the 1945 Constitution, and the spirit of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI).
"Malarangeng’s statement really hurt the feelings of the people from different ethnic groups in Indonesia, because it left an impression as if only a person from a certain ethnic community can become a president while in reality everybody in the country, no matter where he or she came from, can become the top national leader," Djaya Mappaturung said in his protest. On behalf of the people of South Sulawesi, the protesters demanded that presidential candidate Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s campaign team as well as Andi Malarangeng offer an open apology in the print and electronic media.
JIM
Source : Antara
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