Poverty and Unemployment are the Indonesian Presidential Campaign weapons

Poverty and Unemployment are the Indonesian Presidential Campaign weapons

Indonesian Presidential campaign has starting on Tuesday, June 2, 2009. To gain more support from the Indonesian majority, mostly unemployment’s and poverty peoples all the candidates seeking supports mainly through presentations of their economic program amid the global financial routs.

The three pairs are incumbent President Susilo Bambang YudhoyonoSusilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his running mate former central bank governor Boediono, Vice President Jusuf KallaJusuf Kalla, who is chairman of the Golkar Party and his running mate former general Wiranto, and former president Megawati Soekarnoputri, who is chairperson of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) and her running mate former major general Prabowo Subianto who is the Advisory Board of Gerindra Party.

Each pair is predicted to claim that their economic program would bring prosperity to the people, and it would peak during the presidential debates scheduled on June 16 to July 2, event most of the candidates has already mentioned when they states of their declaration of their presidential candidacy.

It can be seen in recent days that the three pairs were busy disseminating to the public about the excellence of their economic plan. Prabowo Subianto for example in many occasion and declaration and interview in some local television and radio and print media said that if he and Megawati Soekarnoputri win the race, the Indonesian economic development will growth in double digit.

‘’If China and India can develop their economic development more than 10%, why we can not doing the same. We see that the present government has the wrong strategic economic programmed. Most of our budget went to pay our debt to foreign countries and another foreign international donors, so the left small budget is not enough to improve our economic programmed, to decrease our poverty and can not establish a newly jobs to our unemployment. We should change this methods,’’ said Prabowo Subianto.

Dradjat Wibowo, members of Indonesian House of Representative who also members of PAN Party, but participate to support Kalla-Wiranto said that the Indonesian peoples can not chose Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono – Boediono, because Boediono is a Liberalism economist who was practicing to sell Indonesian own private enterprices. ‘’We can not improve our economic development just to sell our favourites government own company. Boediono when he was an economic minister in Megawati era did the wrong economic strategic programme,’’ Wibowo added. PAN Party formally support Susilo-Boediono.

Former Indonesian Coordinating economic minister Kwik Kian Gie, who right now seem to support Kalla-Wiranto is also the same vision as Dradjat Wibowo thinks. ‘’Boediono is the real support to practice the free market liberalism method. This method is not suitable for Indonesia,’’ said Kwik.

Meanwhile, event both Party supporters, Megawati-Prabowo supporters and Kalla-Wiranto supporters attack the Boediono vision, Boediono calmly defense their economic vision. ‘’We in Indonesia indeed never practice Liberalism free market 100%. Event in the United States, they combine the two systems, capitalism and socialism. There is some economic intervention in the market by the government,’’ Boediono added.

Kalla and Yudhoyono in the front of members of Trade and Industry Chambers Organization present more moderately on economic programmed. ‘’I promised to improve our economic development by 7%, if we win the race,’’ said both, Yudhoyono and Kalla, event the Government Statistic Central Bureau predict that Indonesian economic growth in 2010 will be 5,5%, instead of 4,3% in the presents times. Over 176 million voters are expected to cast their vote in the July 8 polls.

President Susilo, who seeks re-election for the next five-year term, said his supporters has created stability, strong fundamentals on economy, reform on bureaucracy, combating seismic corruption, and led the country pass the global crisis smoothly.

‘’He and his running mate have offered continuation, consistency and better policies that favor investors,’’ said one of the Democrat leader Anas Urbaningrum.

The respected former general had successfully brought the country's economic growth above 6 percent in the past two years, the highest since the Asian financial crisis in 1997/98. During the current global financial crisis, Indonesia's economy grew positively at 4.3 percent in the first quarter of this year along with China and India, when other Asian countries suffered negative growth.

But, the accusation of taking sides for neo-liberalism has made Susilo a little bit busy to deflect it, which could bring down his popularity in the country.

Former president Megawati and she running mate Prabowo, who is a son of late Indonesia's high profile economic figure, offered pro-poor economic development. Prabowo offered a change in allocation of budget which he said was too small for farmers and sailors who account for nearly 60 percent of Indonesia's 230 million populations.

Through his television advertisement, Probowo strongly criticized the allocation of only 1.6 percent of the country's budget to farmers and sailors.

The last pair, Vice President Jusuf Kalla and his running mate former general Wiranto, offered a faster economic development. Kalla claimed himself as a figure that could make decisions fast. He also offered an economic program that strongly takes sides with the people, and bring Indonesian economic more independents..

Kalla stressed on development of infrastructure and the building of power plant as a source of energy for developing industries and economy. ‘Look, most of our Airport are build by foreign companies, but when I am as a Vice President, I told the project leaders to build Makassar International airport by our own company. We have a competitive airport quality, but the budget event cut by 50%,’’ said Kalla on media advertising.

Meanwhile, Indonesian Communications and Information Minister Mohammad Nuh said that, the number of poor people in Indonesia is predicted to decrease by 4 million to 33.714 million in 2009, due to the improving domestic economy and massive infrastructure projects.

"In 2008, the number of poor population is 37.17 million, and it's estimated to be 33.714 million this year. It means a drop of 4 million people," he said. "We can only minimize the (global economic crisis) impacts, because in fact it is not only Indonesia affected, but other countries, too," he said.

Meanwhile government policy drew some criticism. The “Tim Indonesia Bangkit” complained that this was the first time in 8 years that poverty rates had raised. Revrisond Baswir of the TIB said. The increase in poverty over the last year is out of this world. It reflects the government’s failure to carry out poverty reduction and pro-poor policies.

The Tim Indonesia Bangkit, along with some economists, also claim that the BPS figures are not accurate. The TIB specifically said that the real number of poor was 45.9 million people, or 20.6% of the population. Iman Sugema of the TIB and who is also the director of the International Centre for Applied Finance and Economics said that the household expenditure level should be at 159.000 rupiah instead of the 152.847 set by the BPS.