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Sandiaga not welcome in parts of Bali, NTT
Vice-presidential candidate Sandiaga Uno appears less than welcome in areas that want President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to be reelected.
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Vice-presidential candidate Sandiaga Uno greets his supporters at Al-Hikmah Mosque in Klungkung regency, Bali on Saturday. (Antara/Fikri Yusuf)
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ice-presidential candidate Sandiaga Uno received a less-than-friendly welcome as he hit the campaign trail in areas that strongly support President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s reelection bid.
Sandiaga arrived in Bali on Saturday and was set to visit a village in Tabanan regency on Sunday. The event was canceled after residents sent a letter rejecting the former Jakarta deputy governor’s presence in the area.
“We, the residents of Pakraman Pagi, have agreed to reject the visit/arrival of Bapak Sandiaga Uno in any capacity, because we, the people of Pagi, do not want an unconducive situation, as we support legislative and presidential candidates from the PDI-P,” the letter said, as quoted by tribunnews.com.
Bali is a traditional stronghold of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which won 44 percent of the vote there in the 2014 legislative election. Jokowi also won the province in a landslide, garnering 71.4 percent of the vote compared to Prabowo Subianto’s 28.6 percent.
Sandiaga confirmed that he had received the letter and said he had canceled the visit to the area in order to keep the peace.
“After we assessed the situation, to minimize the potential for conflict, I decided that it’s better for us to only visit areas that don’t have such a potential,” he said on Sunday. “But I have instructed our supporters not to do the same thing to [the Jokowi-Ma’ruf Amin campaign].”
However, his supporters in Denpasar and Badung regency welcomed Sandiaga, where he promised that if he was to be elected, he would stop a land reclamation project in Tanjung Benoa in Badung.
Sandiaga was also met with some hostility as he touched down in Maumere in Sikka regency, East Nusa Tenggara, on Monday, where a banner near the entrance to the city warned him that he was “entering Jokowi-Ma’ruf territory.”
Despite the banner, Sandiaga continued his visit and met with the Roman Catholic bishop of Maumere and other clerics.
https://twitter.com/sandiuno/status/1099941208535687168
Sandiaga also met with his supporters in Sikka, and one of them was Agnes, an entrepreneur producing fish floss. Agnes told news agency Antara that her fish floss had won a second prize at a national competition for small and medium enterprises. "The problem is the marketing," said Agnes in Aspiration House, which is managed by Gerindra Party politician Pius Lustrilanang.
Sandiaga responded by saying he would develop his OK-OCE program in Sikka if he got elected.
Majority-Catholic NTT also voted overwhelmingly for Jokowi in 2014, with the President receiving 65.9 percent of the vote in the province.
Prabowo-Sandiaga campaign spokesperson Dahnil Simanjuntak said the campaign team regretted the incidents.
“Bang Sandi and the campaign team will continue to meet with the people of Bali and NTT, who we are sure uphold diversity, including that related to political views and choices,” he told The Jakarta Post on Monday. (kmt/evi)
