Koran Indonesia looks deceptively like a normal newspaper, but is clearly slanted to make Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri's government look good. "The economy has recovered," reads one headline, while another announces: "Farmers are getting wealthier."
The paper appeared on newsstands on the first day of campaigning for Indonesia's first direct presidential elections, and it comes as no surprise that it's funded by Megawati's campaign team.
It is one of the more innovative -- and some might say sneaky -- ways the five candidates contesting the July 5 polls are trying to win over Indonesia's 150 million voters.
For the first time in the country's history, candidates are fighting to get their message directly to the populace, spending millions on TV and radio commercials and full-page newspaper advertisements.
Previously, voters were bypassed in a system where lawmakers acting as an electoral college picked the president. The system, devised by former dictator Suharto, returned him to power six times until he was ousted in 1998.
Spreading the word about the candidates is not limited to the mass media. Campaign workers also hand out bars of soap, cooking oil, kites and wrist watches emblazoned with candidates' faces at rallies.
Banners bearing simple slogans hang from trees and lampposts and even from cemetery gates across the country.
The top three presidential hopefuls are said to have accumulated huge war chests, mostly in unregulated donations from by wealthy business people seeking favors from future administrations.
So far, Megawati's campaign has spent around US$480,000 on advertisements alone, according to a survey by anti-corruption watchdogs.
She is leading the spending rush -- both on conventional ads and on efforts like Koran Indonesia, which appear to circumvent Indonesia's weak campaign finance laws.
Readers of Koran Indonesian have to get to the fine print at the bottom of page two before they learn that Megawati's campaign team produces the paper.
The 300,000-circulation broadsheet is supposedly on sale for a small sum, but is actually distributed for free.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS