It's The Turn Of The AMIN National Team To Accuse TKN Prabowo-Gibran Of Proposing A Debate On The Presidential And Vice Presidential Candidates Only To Expose Vision And Mission

Volunteers raised two fingers during the Consolidation of the West Java Province Prabowo-Gibran TKD in Bandung, Saturday, November 25, 2023. (ANTARA PHOTO-M Agung Rajasa)

JAKARTA - The Anies Baswedan-Muhaimin Iskandar National Campaign Team (TKN) Prabowo Subianto-Gibran Rakabuming Raka proposed that the presidential and vice-presidential candidate debate only contain a presentation of vision and mission.

This was revealed by the National Team Co-captain AMIN Nihayatul Wafiroh in response to the accusation by TKN Prabowo-Gibran that the AMIN camp proposed a vice presidential debate accompanied by their respective presidential candidates.

The proposal was previously put forward in a discussion held by the General Elections Commission regarding the technical planning of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates on November 29.

"In the FGD on November 29, 2023 at the KPU, we recorded a proposal from the candidate pair team number 2 so that the debate format is only in the form of presentation and deepening of the vision and mission documents," Nihayatul said in a written statement, Sunday, December 3.

"This means that the format of debate only involves questions between candidate pairs and moderators and panelists, as well as eliminating objections between candidate pairs as a whole," he continued.

Based on the minutes recorded by the AMIN national team at the time, the Prabowo-Gibran camp views the debate with the model of responding to each other between candidate pairs will spend a lot of time without having the opportunity to explain the vision and mission of each candidate pair.

The AMIN national team, said Nihayatul, clearly rejected the proposal. In fact, Nihayatul stated that the Ganjar-Mahfud National Winning Team (TPN) also rejected the debate proposal without a rebuttal from TKN Prabowo-Gibran.

"The AMIN national team has firmly rejected the proposal of candidate pair number 2, which if approved will limit the introduction of voters to the full quality of the candidate pairs, and seems to want to provide excessive comfort to certain candidate pairs," he said.

For information, the KPU eliminated the 2024 presidential election debate format which only featured the vice president in one activity. This time there is no special debate for the vice presidential candidate separately because the couple will come with each debate.

The Prabowo-Gibran National Campaign Team (TKN) responded to this. A member of the Prabowo-Gibran Expert Council, Dradjad H. Wibowo, said that the proposed vice presidential debate format accompanied by his presidential candidate was originally disclosed by the AMIN camp.

Drajad revealed that this proposal was put forward in a KPU meeting with representatives of the three pairs of presidential and vice-presidential candidates on November 29. The meeting discussed the KPU's presentation regarding the date, place, theme, event format, design, and composition of the debate event.

"Anies-Muhaimin representatives submit some input or suggestions. One of them reads approximately as follows, 'So that in every debate session, presidential and vice presidential candidates are present together, the division of time or portion of speech is please regulated by the KPU'," said Drajad.

Drajad said this proposal was submitted by a mother of Anies-Muhaimin representatives and strengthened by her colleague. However, TKN Prabowo-Gibran did not know who the proposer was.

Then, when the representatives of the Prabowo-Gibran pair got their turn to reveal their proposal, the chairman of the Prabowo-Gibran TKN Expert Council, Burhanuddin Abdullah, approved the proposal from the Anies-Cak Imin camp.

"Thus, it is clear and clear that President Jokowi did not intervene in debate with the KPU. In fact, I personally believe he does not know about the proposal," he said.