•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   

Jusuf Kalla
Born: Watampone,
South Sulawesi,
May 15, 1942
Religion: Islam
Education: Economic faculty, University of Hasanuddin, Makassar, 1967
The European Institute of Business Administration Fountainebleu, France, 1977

Career Highlights:
President director of N.V. Hadji Kalla, 1969-2001
President director of PT Bumi Karsa, 1988-2001
Minister of Industry and Trade, 1999-2000
Commissioner of PT Bukaka Singtel International, 2000-present
Coordinating minister for People’s Welfare, 2001-2004

Current Position Held:
Vice president of Indonesia, 2004-present

Decisive, aggressive and controversial. These are probably the best adjectives to describe the nation’s vice president, Golkar Party chairman and presidential candidate Muhammad Jusuf Kalla, more commonly known as Jusuf Kalla.

Throughout his five-year term as vice president, Kalla has refused to take a back seat to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Unlike the president, who appears to be calculated and careful, Kalla is a more decisive figure, often doing the dirty work and articulating policies, including unpopular ones. At times, he has even been referred to as “the real president.”

Despite his reputation as an astute and tough politician, however, he has been blamed by his Golkar Party for its performance leading up to the April 9 legislative elections, at which it pulled far fewer votes than in the 2004 election. It was also the party’s demands as one of the largest political parties that forced Kalla to run for the presidency, although sources said he would have been more content to be chosen as Yudhoyono’s running mate once again.

This has resulted in a bitter period for both men, with the two barely communicating since the final rush to confirm party nominations for the July 8 presidential election.

Kalla, 67, was born into a life of privilege. His father, H. Kalla, was a wealthy export and import businessman and his mother, Athirah, owned an educational foundation in Makassar, South Sulawesi. It was only natural that Jusuf Kalla would be thrust into business as the eldest son of 16 siblings.

After graduating from the economics faculty of Hasanuddin University in Makassar in 1967, Kalla furthered his study at the European Institute of Business Administration in Fontainebleau, France.

Returning home, he took the helm of the family business, along with his siblings, expanding it into new fields, including transportation. His company continues to control automobile distribution in eastern Indonesia.

Kalla was also the chairman of the South Sulawesi chapter of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin).

His political career, meanwhile, began when he became a member and then the leader of the Indonesian Muslim Students Association (HMI), which is affiliated with Golkar. He then joined the party, rising through the ranks, and became a legislator in the People’s Consultative Assembly in 1998.

When Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid was elected president in 1999, Kalla was appointed the minister of industry and trade. He was sacked by Gus Dur after six months in the job, however, on suspicion of corruption, collusion and nepotism, something the Gus Dur administration was unable to prove.

The dismissal was one of the reasons Gus Dur was impeached in 2001 by the People’s Consultative Assembly for incompetence. Then Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri was installed as his successor, leading to Kalla’s return to the cabinet as chief welfare minister.
Kalla pulled out from a Golkar convention to seek a presidential candidate to join Yudhoyono as his running mate in the 2004 elections.

Along with Yudhoyono, he was the first national leader to be directly elected by the people. He won the Golkar chairmanship a few months later.

With his honed political skills, he went on to help resolve inter-religious conflicts in Poso, Central Sulawesi, and Ambon, Maluku, and has often been given much of the credit for the negotiations that led to the 2005 peace deal that ended almost 30 years of separatist violence in Aceh.

Kalla has often landed in trouble for his controversial statements.

In 2006, he sparked anger for his suggestion that Indonesian tourism campaigns directed at the Middle East should highlight the availability of attractive women.

“If there are a lot of Middle Eastern tourists traveling to Puncak [West Java] to seek widows or divorcees, I think that’s OK,” he said.
“If they [the women] get modest homes, even if the tourists later leave them, then it’s OK. The children from these relationships will have good genes. There will be more television actors and actresses from these pretty boys and girls.”

Kalla later apologized for the statement but blamed the media for exaggerating what he said had been meant as a joke.

Later that year, in his speech during the 2006 World AIDS Day commemoration, Kalla suggested that, “if you do not want to be discriminated against, do not [engage in risky behavior and get infected with] HIV/AIDS.”

One analyst has said that Kalla has had the opportunity to represent himself as a leader determined to meet public demand for a more pragmatic and decisive leader.

Kalla recently claimed that he would perform better than the current president, should he be elected to the top job.

Febriamy Hutapea & Hera Diani

Wiranto
Born: Yogyakarta, April 4, 1947
Religion: Islam
Education: Indonesia Armed Forces Academy, 1968

Career Highlights:
Assistant for operations to chief of staff in the Second Infantry Division of the Army’s Strategic Reserve Command, 1988
President Suharto’s adjutant, 1989
Jakarta military commander, 1994
Kostrad commander, 1996
Army chief of staff, 1997
Armed Forces commander
and defense minister, 1998

Current Position Held:
Chairman of the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura)

Wiranto was born in Central Java 62 years ago, the son of a poor elementary school teacher. He is best known for his illustrious military career, which gathered momentum after a stint as former President Suharto’s personal aide in 1987-91.

Due to his relationship with Suharto, Wiranto quickly became the chief of military for the special province of Jakarta, and then leapfrogged into a post as the Army’s chief of staff. In March 1998, he was named head of the Armed Forces.

But his hapless appointment came on the eve of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, which brought the country’s economy to the brink of collapse. Enraged students stepped up demands for Suharto to cede his presidency after May 12, when soldiers shot and killed four students from Trisakti University. For two days, the capital descended into an orgy of arson, looting and violence. Ethnically Chinese Indonesian citizens were targeted in an explosion of resentment against the minority’s perceived collective wealth and stereotypes linking them to the government.

Police and the military failed to contain the violence, and appeared to some to have sanctioned it. The riots led to Suharto’s resignation on May 21, but the change of power did little to ease ethnic friction and some observers have accused military officers of instigating attacks.

A book written by retired Gen. Sintong Pandjaitan implicates Wiranto for deliberately allowing the country to spiral out of control in 1998. When reporters asked Wiranto about the accusations in March this year, he smiled.

“Everyone can write their opinion,” Wiranto said. “It’s like viewing a mountain. You get a different view depending on where you look at it from.”

Wiranto has weathered similar allegations in the past. In 2003, he was indicted in absentia before an international tribunal for funding and ordering the deaths of more than 280 civilians in the wake of East Timor’s vote for independence in 1999. Wiranto has also faced accusations he is responsible for 10 massacres in East Timor, in which at least 1,000 people were killed.

Wiranto has never faced a court for those charges, and claimed that the international tribunal was politically biased. He has denied any responsibility for those events. An arrest warrant against him, issued by the East Timor Special Crimes Unit, is still in effect.

In 2004, former activist Fadli Zon and retired Gen. Kivlan Zein, both now publicly supporting the ticket of former President Megawati Sukarnoputri and Prabowo Subianto in the election, wrote that Wiranto not only deliberately led the country into chaos in 1998, but was also directly responsible for the ensuing riots.

Wiranto, the two wrote, masterminded mob attacks against the ethnic Chinese Indonesians and students as an attempt to restore Suharto’s rule.

The two accused Wiranto of promoting the establishment of civilian security guards, known as Pamswarkarsa, in 1998, to secure a People’s Consultative Assembly session that was held after Suharto’s fall. His move, the book claims, was meant to crack down on students, which were protesting former President BJ Habibie, Suharto’s successor.

Wiranto denied the accusations. Some of Wiranto’s supporters viewed the book as a political attack. At the time, Wiranto was angling for a nod as the Golkar Party’s presidential candidate. He eventually won the party ticket but lost the race to retired Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

In the 2004 presidential race, Wiranto ran with Salahuddin Wahid, the brother of former President Abdurrahman Wahid as his vice presidential candidate while Yudhoyono ran with Jusuf Kalla, a Golkar executive who split from the party to accept Yudhoyono’s offer to campaign at his side.

Kalla’s position as Indonesia’s vice president later solidified his position in the party and led to his being named the new Golkar chairman, replacing Akbar Tanjung, who was embroiled in a graft trial at the time.

Disappointed by his failure, and Golkar’s lack of unity in backing his presidential bid, Wiranto established his own party, the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura) in December 2006. Thousands gathered at the Kartika Chandra Hotel in South Jakarta for the party’s inauguration ceremony, including several top officials from the Golkar Party, who later joined Hanura.

Hanura garnered only 3.8 percent of the national vote in this year’s April 9 legislative poll.

Wiranto’s bitter relationship with Kalla, however, appears to have faded into the past, as Hanura and Golkar consummated their unlikely coalition on April 24 to muster for next month’s presidential poll.

“I am very happy with the agreement. We see the similarities [between Golkar and Hanura] in our vision to form a strong government,” Wiranto said at the declaration.

The decision to run as Kalla’s mate, however, did not come until May 2. Golkar had previously hoped to form a coalition with Yudhoyono’s Democratic party or Megawati’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). 

Nivell Rayda, Hera Diani & Febriamy Hutapea