ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Last month, millions of Indonesians flocked to the polls for that nation's first truly open election since 1955. Election observers, including former President Jimmy Carter, commended the orderly and apparently fair manner in the vote for members of a new parliament. FORMER PRESIDENT CARTER: I don't have any indication, no evidence yet, I don't even have any allegations coming to me from any of the major party officials, that such illegalities have been perpetrated or that the ultimate outcome of the will of the Indonesian people has been subverted. CARTER: A WARNING ABOUT CREDIBILITY ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: But Carter was among those warning that the credibility of the election process could be damaged if it took too long to count the votes, not just in big cities like the capital, Jakarta, but in the 14,000 islands that make up the Indonesian archipelago. The elections were part of a package of reforms promised last year by Indonesia's new president B.J. Habibie. He came to power after weeks of massive demonstrations that brought an end to 33 years of authoritarian rule by President Suharto. Habibie also inherited an economy shattered by the financial crisis that hit East Asia in 1997. Hundreds of thousands of Indonesians who had risen from poverty to middle class status lost jobs and found themselves falling back into lives of hunger and unemployment. Many had taken out their anger at Suharto, who was accused to enriching his family and friends with so-called "crony capitalism." Habibie's reforms for this country of 212 million people included promising a free press, allowing the formation of opposition political parties and holding democratic elections. The press has become vocal and spirited and two major political groups, as well as smaller parties, rose up to challenge the ruling Golkar party in the elections. And the 500-member parliament was supposed to combine with 200 provincial leaders in a people's consultative assembly that would choose a new president later in the year. HABIBIE: INDONESIA SHOULD EMBRACE DEMOCRACY ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: On election day Habibie urged all parties to embrace the democratic process and respect the results of the ballot. B. J. HABIBIE, Indonesian President: In every game there's a winner and loser, and the party that wins should act with nobility and think of the responsibility it has over the next five years. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: But one month after the elections, only sixty percent of the votes have been tallied. Final results were due today, were once again postponed, this time until July 21. Based on the official count so far, the principal opposition party known as the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle is ahead with 36% of the vote. Its leader is Megawati Sukarnoputri-- the daughter of Indonesia's former president Sukarno, who lead the struggle against Dutch colonialism and who was ousted by Suharto in a bloody coup in 1965 in which thousands were killed. Habibie's party -- the Golkar Party -- is running a distant second with 20 percent of the vote. Forty-six other parties, including several Muslim groups in this overwhelmingly Muslim nation, share the remaining vote. Officials said the counting was complicated by Indonesia's sprawling geography. But opposition groups raised accusations of corruption and vote tampering, and that has led to violence. Last Thursday, fifteen hundred protesters in Jakarta hurled rocks and demanded that the ruling Golkar Party be disqualified. Police moved in, firing shots and using tear gas to control the crowd. About two dozen people were wounded. The next day heavily armed police suppressed demonstrators who tried to march on the election commission headquarters. And Indonesia is also facing violence in East Timor. THE EAST TIMOR QUESTION ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Habibie had promised a referendum on autonomy or independence for residents of East Timor, a former Portuguese colony that Indonesia seized in 1975. A vote was scheduled but then postponed by U.N. election monitors because of violence. Last week, there were several attacks on U.N. election officials by militias, which have also attacked pro-independence leaders. Some say the militias are armed by the Indonesian military, which still has responsibility for overall security in East Timor. At least twelve U.N. workers have been injured, and U.N. officials said the violence could derail the referendum. Yesterday the head of the U.N. mission in East Timor demanded that Indonesia rein in the militias. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan is expected to announce a final decision on the East Timor ballot date within the next few days. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: For more on all this, we turn now to Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia during the Reagan Administration-- he was in Indonesia last month observing the elections for the Carter Center and the National Democratic Institute; Donald Emmerson, Professor of Political Science and Southeast Asian studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison -- he too was an election observer last month; and Sidney Jones, executive director of Human Rights Watch Asia-- she was last in Indonesia in February, and has been there frequently over the past 20 years. Ambassador Wolfowitz, what has the election process so far told us about Indonesia now a little more than a year after Suharto was forced out? THE ELECTION PROCESS: A GOOD SIGN? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Well, I think the basic news is still extremely good in spite of all the disturbing indications that were included in your introduction. The fact is the fourth largest country in the world on June 7, demonstrated in a powerful and impressive way the deep desire of the Indonesian people for democracy, their determination to make it work, their determination to make it work in a peaceful fashion. These elections were extraordinarily peaceful, much more peaceful than the last rigged elections under the old regime. So, it's a very good start, and I think potentially very important both for solving Indonesia's problems but also if Indonesia ultimately succeeds in becoming the world's third largest democracy, it will have, I think, a big influence on the rest of Asia and the rest of the Muslim world. It will be one of the first democracies in the Muslim world. But the problem is not just the slowness of the vote count. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And by the way, let me interrupt before you go on. Why, briefly, is it so slow? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: I think it is more because the country is so vast, because the procedures were so quickly put together and frankly, because in many cases, when there are disputes about the vote count, they laboriously go back and check the differences and work on them. The fact is that while only 60 percent of the vote may be officially counted through very effective sampling procedures, constructed by an organization put together by the rectors of the major universities, everyone has a reasonably good idea of what the final vote count is going to look like. The problem is that it split up among roughly six major parties. And the key is going to be, I believe, for Megawati Sukarnoputri, who will end up with something like 35 percent of the vote, which makes her the very clear leader in this election but that by itself is not enough to establish a government with broad popular support. She and other parties, and I think it has to be the parties that represent this overwhelming desire for change and reform, need to be able to put together a government. The sooner they can get on with that, the sooner some of the problems of unrest that were mentioned in your introduction I think can be dealt with more effectively. REFORM AND CHANGE. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Donald Emmerson, what's your view on what the elections so far have shown us about reform and change? DONALD EMMERSON: I agree with Paul that I think we should be grateful that election day was remarkably peaceful. It's important to remember that a lot of people expected major violence to occur. Nevertheless, the real problem is when an election is effective, it has to deliver. And the delays make the delivery, they push it off until sometime perhaps as late as November. We might not know until then who the next president of Indonesia is going to be. And, as Paul implied, the extraordinary complex and cumbersome system that Indonesia is now saddled with means that there are 238 seats in the 700-member constituent assembly - the people's consultative assembly -- that are not directly elected at all. And, therefore, if you get all of those 238 seats, you only need as little as quarter of the seats that were directly elected on the 7th of June in order to get an absolutely majority in the assembly and become president. Now, a lot of people worry that in the backrooms of Jakarta, as politicians maneuver to try to make coalitions to put together that winning number of 351 seats, the election which appears to have been won by Megawati is going to be lost to somebody else, conceivably even Habibie. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Sidney Jones, just briefly, what do you think about what this show is about? And then tell us a little about Megawati. I understand she is called by one name, as many Indonesians are. SIDNEY JONES: That's right. I think it is important to underscore that the longer this goes on, the more dangerous it will be, because it's as though all the rest of Indonesia on hold. Nobody is paying attention to the economy in a systematic way. Nobody is paying attention to the building unrest in the regions. East Timor is going to hell in a hand basket. We've got Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra erupting. We have got violence breaking out in other places in a way that has nothing to do with the election. So, unless this is resolved soon - and I think somebody is going to have to declare closure quite quickly - I think we could see much of the good that's been done come unraveled. WHO IS MEGAWATI? SIDNEY JONES: As far as Megawati is concerned, she is someone who came into political prominence in 1993, mostly on the basis of her father's name. She had a reputation as being someone who was clean and uncorrupt, which in itself was a major departure in Indonesia. She is somebody who is-- represents nostalgia for her father who was seen in some cases, misguidedly, as being someone who supported the little guy. He was a populist and she's a populist. Appealing to the lower urban classes, people who have nothing and think that if she comes to power, she will deliver and so on. And, yet, she has said nothing. She has no political program. She's a figurehead in some ways who has maintained her support by being absolutely silent and not saying anything about what she intends to do if, in fact, she does become president. She's got people in her close circle of advisors who are very good but represent radically different streams of thinking, so she's got one person who supports, for example, a fixed exchange rate. She's got somebody else who supports a floating exchange rate. She is somebody who doesn't want East Timor to become independent. And yet she appeals to many intellectuals and people in the Jakarta urban elite who would like to see a free and fair referendum in East Timor. So, nobody has a clue what's going to happen. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Ambassador Wolfowitz, do you want to add anything to that? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: I think it's true that Megawati articulated very few policy positions in this campaign. But she did very clearly for two things: Number one, she stood for change. And change means a broad desire of the Indonesian people to have a government that isn't corrupt, that doesn't abuse power. In fact, if you combine her votes with those of Abdurrahman Wahid's party which also stood for change, and Amien Rais's party, which also stood for change. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Those are both Muslim parties. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Well, actually Amien Rais's party is not a Muslim party, although he himself was a major Muslim figure. And Abdurrahman Wahid is a major Muslim figure, but all three of these people - I think this is important -not only stood for change but stood against those people who said politics should be determined by religion, that Indonesians should be divided. Megawati's standard stump speech was, I'm not a Javanese; I'm an Indonesian. And even though she was criticized by some quarters for not being Islamic enough, the millions of people who voted for her, are almost all overwhelmingly Muslims. So, there is a basis there to put something together. I agree absolutely the longer this goes on, the greater the danger is. As I'm told, taxi drivers in Jakarta say the whole process will catch a cold or get pneumonia. The key isn't getting the ballots counted faster because that by itself won't resolve it, and the key is not going into back room deals and consultative assembly ultimately. I think the real key is for those three leaders I mentioned who really do have between the three of them, a great mandate for change and perhaps some other people from other parties to put together the makings of a government of national unity, which includes deciding who will have what positions, but also resolving some of these outstanding issues of policy -- not all of them but at least a few of the major ones. SIDNEY JONES: But the problem again is the longer it goes on, the more there's room for the opposition and manipulation to build so that Paul mentioned that there was a growing movement to deny Megawati the presidency on the ground that she's a woman and a woman shouldn't be a president in a Muslim country. Now, that's been flatly rejected as an argument by some of the key Muslim leaders. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: And also by the military. SIDNEY JONES: It's a sentiment that's held. But just now, just today, there was a bill introduced to say that only a president could be in power if they had a college education which Megawati doesn't have. And it seems as though people are looking for ways to almost pull this process which is very fragile but thus far, very positive apart in ways that could be disastrous unless, as I say, it comes to closure quite quickly. THE EAST TIMOR ISSUE ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Donald Emmerson, we don't have a lot of time, but would you fit the situation of East Timor into this overall picture? DONALD EMMERSON: Frankly, I think the alarm that Sidney strikes is perhaps a especially relevant to East Timor. I'm more optimistic about the political process in Indonesia as whole. But East Timor is an extraordinarily volatile place at the moment. We have clear evidence that elements within the Indonesian military have for some time now been supporting, even supplying arms to militias, as they're called, that have engaged in considerable violence, including killing people, that is people who support independence because they are dead-set against it and would like to keep East Timor inside Indonesia. And let's remember also that there are a fair number of Indonesian military officers that have fought in East Timor. Some of them have married East Timorese wives. They have property in East Timor. I interviewed a general who is a reform-minded person when it comes to democratization for his own country, Indonesia, but who absolutely draws the line -- no independence for East Timor. One of the things that I worry about is that as the East Timor situation continues to unravel, it could reconnect with politics in Jakarta in a rather nasty way. If there were to be a president who came to power in Jakarta who wanted East Timor to become independent, or at least who was willing to tolerate it, the question is, would the army go along? I'm not sure. SIDNEY JONES: I think there's another key question which is, one of the questions is, why is the army backing the militias at this stage? It's not just because they serve there. It's because some leading people in Jakarta, leading officers see East Timor as the first in a series of dominoes and believe this if this U.N. mission, which is in East Timor to supervise a referendum, is allowed to succeed and if the East Timorese people do vote for independence, that that will start a chain toward the disintegration of Indonesia. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Which has always been the fear, right? SIDNEY JONES: Yes. And hook up with rebellions in Aceh and the tip of North Sumatra in Irianjaya, which is the Indonesian part of the island of New Guinea, and so on. Now, I think it's not the case - ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I have to interrupt. I'm sorry. I have to interrupt you. We're out of time for this. But thank you all very much.
