June 22, 1999 NEWS ANALYSIS Indonesia's Vote: Reformers May Be Disappointed By SETH MYDANS JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesians have remained remarkably patient as they wait out the slow, confused counting of the parliamentary votes they cast two weeks ago. But it seems that whatever the outcome, the will of the people may in large part be denied. To begin with, it has become clear that the 112 million votes that were cast in the first free election in a generation were just the starting gun in a rough-and-tumble scramble for the presidency. Indonesia's excruciatingly complex electoral system is not due to produce a new president until November. Analyzing the numbers and the politics, though, some experts now predict a close finish between the incumbent, President B.J. Habibie, and his main challenger, Megawati Sukarnoputri. With Mrs. Megawati projected to win a clear plurality of the popular vote, such an outcome would result as much from back-room deals and unelected delegates as from the ballot box. Second, although the watchword of the election was "reform," none of the leading contenders for the presidency is a reformer at heart. It is possible, some analysts suggest, that once a new government is in place, the momentum for political and social change may peter out. "I'm not too optimistic that a reform agenda will come from this election," said Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a leading political analyst who is also an adviser to Habibie. "The agenda that was upheld by the students and several public figures will be delayed for another five or 10 years." That agenda includes a reduction of the military's political role; amendments to the vaguely written and undemocratic Constitution; reducing central government control with some form of federalism; independence for the disputed territory of East Timor, and an investigation and possible trial of former President Suharto and his family for corruption. Indeed, some analysts go so far as to suggest that Habibie, who leads Golkar, the party of Suharto, who was forced to resign last year, is more liberal than Mrs. Megawati, the candidate of the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, or PDIP. "I think there is a lot of sense of irony that Golkar is seen as the status quo party but is headed by one of the most Westernized figures in Indonesian political history, whereas PDIP, the party of reform, is led by a lady solidly rooted in the feudal past," said John Bresnan, an Indonesia expert at Columbia University. Habibie, though a lifelong acolyte of Suharto, spent 20 years working as an engineer in Germany, where, Bresnan says, he absorbed Western values of democracy and human rights. Mrs. Megawati is the daughter of Indonesia's founding president, Sukarno, and has spent her life within the country's political establishment. Her reform credentials come from her opposition to Suharto -- or rather, from his opposition to her rising political profile -- rather than from any personal philosophy. "She's always been very conservative and disappointing to many of us," said Goenawan Muhamad, a writer and political analyst. He noted that when students recently issued a mock "Suharto Award" to enemies of reform, Mrs. Megawati placed fourth, just behind Habibie and two of his ministers. Though she has remained exasperatingly vague about any political beliefs she may hold, Mrs. Megawati appears to be resisting the main demands of the reform movement that has flourished since it helped to bring down Suharto. Much of her electoral support came from people who yearn for change. "Now that the election is over, I believe political reform will slow down because the parties that are winning are basically conservative parties," said Hidayat Jati, a political analyst for The Castle Group, a consulting company for foreign investors. "This is clearly not going to be the expected divorce from the past that these college kids and activist leaders and over-enthusiastic voters were looking for." Jati and the other analysts may well be right, but they are well ahead of the game. Only about 75 percent of the "quick count" has been completed so far, and the official count is only in its early stages. Remarkably, electoral fraud appears to have played only a peripheral role. Only a few small parties that have been left far behind in the field of 48 are claiming that the overall vote was invalid. The real problem, most analysts agree, has been inexperience, poor planning, incompetence and confusion. In an interim report on Sunday, American election monitors from the Carter Center and the National Democratic Institute praised "the commitment to democracy, openness and transparency" of the election administration and local monitoring groups. But it said the complicated vote counting system had aroused "confusion and some suspicion" among the public. Now, as the next stage of the process gets going, people may have even more reason to be confused and suspicious. With the votes still being counted, the real action has moved behind closed doors, where hard-nosed deals are being cut among parties, factions of parties and interest groups, which notably include the politically powerful military. This undemocratic procedure is mostly built into the system. If the process were to stop now with the counting of the popular vote, a foreign diplomat said, Mrs. Megawati would be in a position to form a coalition that, under political pressure, might reflect a reform agenda. "But you bring in all these other elements, and it takes on a very different look," he said. "You get something in which the people's sovereignty has been taken away from them." The popular vote involved only 462 seats in a 700-member assembly that will choose the next president. The other, unelected, seats will come from the military, from social and professional groups, and from provincial assemblies. All the seats, both elected and appointed, are subject to lobbying, coalition-building and illegal vote- buying. Parliamentary delegates are not required to support the parties they represent. Even with all these variables, several analysts said they could see a neck-and-neck race developing between coalitions built around Habibie and Mrs. Megawati. "I think we are seeing two reasonably evenly-matched coalitions that will emerge from this," a Western election expert said. In such a case, the military -- which has remained studiously neutral -- could be the deciding factor. Or perhaps not. Having gone through an elaborate parsing of the available numbers, the election expert stepped back and produced a disclaimer. "We are in for a period of complete uncertainty, really," he conceded. "Complete uncertainty."
