Sunariyah, Jakarta – Workers apparently are still traumatised by the administration of former President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Although more than 10 years have passed, they still recall several of Megawati’s policies that brought suffering to workers. One of these was the policy on outsourcing that is still in force to this day.
Anton Siregar, the Bekasi regional leadership board public relations officer from the Solidarity Alliance for Labour Struggle (GSPB), said that although workers have yet to determine which presidential candidate to support in July, they will not support Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo or Jokowi from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).
“We don’t want Jokowi. He’s from the PDI-P right. We know about the past during Mega[wait]’s era when outsourcing was established”, said Siregar during an action at the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle in Central Jakarta on Thursday May 1.
The other reason workers oppose supporting Jokowi is because they believe that he will only become a puppet that will be controlled by Megawati. This said Siregar will cause workers to be abused as they were when Megawati was in power.
“We don’t want a Jokowi controlled by Mega, so we won’t give our vote to Jokowi. We don’t truest the political parties”, he said.
With regard to the kind of presidential candidate that the GSPB would like, Siregar said that they had not thought about it yet. “Not yet. None have appeared yet. But for Jokowi, we can’t expect much”, he concluded. (Sss)
[Translated by James Balowski for the Indoleft News Service.]
