The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, Wednesday September 25 2013,
The rejection from local the Muslim majority residents against the head of Lenteng Agung subdistrict in South Jakarta continued after some 700 people took to the street on Wednesday, urging the dismissal of the Christian subdistrict head.
Residents from Lenteng Agung demanded that the Jakarta Administration dismiss their newly installed subdistrict head, Susan Jasmine Zulkifli, 43, simply because she was a Christian, not a Muslim like the majority of the residents.
Spokesman of the Forum of Lenteng Agung Residents, Mochamad Rusli, said that the Wednesday’s demonstration was bigger than ones previous held, in which only around 300 people took the street in front of the subdistrict office.
“Today we held a long march [Not just staying in front of the subdistrict head office],” Rusli said as quoted by tempo.co on Wednesday.
He said that in the long march, the protesters brought a coffin corpse which he said ‘depicting the death of democracy.’ He added that the Jakarta Administration had yet to respond to Wednesday’s protest. The residents demanded that the subdistrict head be moved to a more heterogeneity subdistrict.
Jakarta Governor Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo previously reiterated that he would not move the Christian head in spite of some residents’ demand for her dismissal. He even suspected that the dismissal demand was a result of internal rift.
Jokowi stressed that he installed leaders of district and subdistrict based on their performances and achievements and that he, therefore, would not remove nor transfer local leaders.
Susan was among the 415 local leaders inaugurated in June by Jokowi after passing a series of tests in an open-call selection
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wo 25 sep 2013 - 7:22