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Indonesian lawmaker Marwan Jafar is in the hot seat after being accused of passing off a Makassar student’s work as his own in an opinion article published in a leading national newspaper on Friday.

Jusman Dalle, the Makassar student, took to Twitter on Friday morning to accuse the House chairman of the National Awakening Party (PKB) of plagiarism.

He later told the Jakarta Globe that he was reading Koran Tempo and was surprised to come across Marwan’s piece, because it looked so much like an opinion piece he had written for the Internet news portal Okezone.com.

“Twitter is effective, it spreads news very quickly. I intentionally mentioned some House members, such as deputy House speakers Anis Matta and Pramono Anung, because they have a lot of followers,” said Jusman, who is an active member of Indonesian Muslim Student Action Unity (Kammi), a national group.

Marwan wrote an opinion piece on Libya’s energy management after the death of the country’s leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, for the paper’s Friday edition. His piece was titled “Libyan Energy Management Post-Gaddafi.”

Jusman touches on the same issue in his piece, which appeared on Oct. 25, 2011, under the title, “Quo Vadis Libya?”

At least 10 of the 13 paragraphs in Marwan’s piece bear a striking resemblance to Jusman’s, the only difference being the arrangement of the paragraphs and the use of a few different words.

Speaking to the Jakarta Globe, Marwan denied plagiarizing Jusman’s work, but conceded errors may have been made.

“The allegations aren’t true,” he said. “It’s a technical error on the part of my aides. They may have forgotten to cite a source.”

Imam Nahrawi, secretary general of the PKB, said it was unlikely that Marwan would have plagiarized his article in Koran Tempo.

“Pak Marwan is very creative. He is a diligent writer. I am not sure that he would do such thing,” he said, adding that the party would summon Marwan to clarify the matter.

Koran Tempo’s managing editor, Yos Rizal, said the newspaper would compare the two articles before making a statement.

If the allegation is proven to be true, Koran Tempo will blacklist Marwan, Yos said. But he added that they would wait for Jusman to write a letter to the editor.

Jusman said he and Kammi would submit a complaint to the House Ethics Council next week. “As for Koran Tempo, I will send them a letter tomorrow,” the student said.