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View all search resultsPPP says it benefits from Angel controversy
The public debate over the Islamic-based United Development Partyâs (PPP) nomination of controversial actress Angel Lelga as a legislative candidate will cause more good than harm to the partyâs popularity ahead of the upcoming general election, a top party official says
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T
he public debate over the Islamic-based United Development Party's (PPP) nomination of controversial actress Angel Lelga as a legislative candidate will cause more good than harm to the party's popularity ahead of the upcoming general election, a top party official says.
In an interview on Monday, PPP election campaign team (Bapilu) head Fernita Darwis admitted that her party had been
struggling to maintain its popularity partly due to the limited media publicity it had received in the past few years.
The nomination of Angel, a B-movie actress and swimsuit model, she said, was a part of the PPP's strategy to grab the
public's and the media's attention ahead of the April 9 vote.
'Many journalists, for example, have frequently told us that the PPP is not popular among media people because it has failed to raise interesting issues to the public,' Fernita said.
'However, our support for Angel's legislative bid has recently sparked a controversy that probably would not emerge if she chose to join with other [nationalist] parties, like the Democratic Party or the Golkar Party. We realized that this was the thing we needed to again make PPP a media darling.'
Angel, who is running as the PPP's top candidate for the Central Java V electoral district covering Boyolali, Klaten and Sukoharjo regencies as well as Surakarta municipality, has been under the spotlight after she was humiliated on MetroTV's political talk show Mata Najwa last week.
On the program, Angel gave a stuttered and halting response to questions posed by host Najwa Shihab about her motivation to contest the 2014 legislative election.
One of the most embarrassing moments was when Angel, apparently running out of ways to respond to questions, gave her final words: 'Regarding some of the issues, I haven't asked my party chairman, so I
don't have my own opinion. I don't want to meddle with party affairs.'
Fernita, however, believed that her party would not suffer from such bad press, saying that PPP still had some other sources of public relations firepower, including its success in securing the support of the family members of the late former president Abdurrahman 'Gus Dur' Wahid for the upcoming election.
