DEMOCRATS READY WITH STRATEGY TO COUNTER BLACK CAMPAIGNS

Jakarta, June 25 (ANTARA) - Presidential aspirant Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party (PD) has devised a strategy to counter the various black campaigns about him and his running mate Boediono, a PD executive said.

"We are ready with a strategy to counter the black campaigns but it will be carried out without words one week before the July 8 presidential election," PD Associate Chairman Ahmad Mubarok said here on Thursday.

He said the counter campaign would be conducted not only to respond to allegations on the non-Muslim status of Boediono's wife, but also to unnerve various other negative issues about the SBY-Boediono pair.

Commenting on the emergence of religious issue in the run up to the July election, Mubarok said religious issues were no longer relevant and effective because raising them was in fact counter productive.

"The excessive Muslim and non-Muslim issues will even be counter-productive," Mubarok said, adding that the allegation that Boediono's wife Herawati Boediono was a Catholic was slander.

Meanwhile, PD Advisory Board member Hayono Isman said Boediono's wife was a Muslim who was born into a Muslim family.

"It is not true that Boediono's wife Herawati Boediono is a Catholic, and therefore we are going to trace the source of the allegation," Isman said.

A member of the SBY-Boediono national success team, Anas Urbaningrum, said here on Monday that the team would go ahead with white campaigns.

Urbaningrum said that although the SBY-Boediono pair were being relentlessly attacked with negative and black campaigns, their success team would continue to stage white, civil, and polite campaigns in the run up to the election.

"SBY-Boediono's national success team will continue to intensify white campaigns, including the familiarization of the duo's programs of action in the next five years," Urbaningrum said.

"We also want to win in a civil and democratic way, because to win the election through the white and polite campaigns is our main goal," Anas Urbaningrum said.

He admitted that because of the negative campaigns and black campaigns against Yudhoyono and Boediono in the past two weeks, a survey had shown the duo's popularity had dropped.