Fighting for Votes
With Indonesia's presidential election set for a
runoff, the race may be decided by who has the most
friends
by Joe Cochrane | News Week, Jul 19 '04
On the eve of Indonesia's first direct presidential
election last week, incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri
was teary-eyed. The normally wooden-faced president
choked up during a nationally televised appeal for a
peaceful vote. She had other reasons to be stressed:
surveys ahead of the July 5 vote showed her lagging in
third place. But any worries she may have had--her
aides say she had the flu--now appear to have been
premature. Preliminary results have her firmly in
second place behind former Army general Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono, popularly known as SBY, forcing a runoff
election in September. (Final results are expected to
be announced this week.) "She has a fighting chance,"
says Jusuf Wanandi, chairman of the Centre for
Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. "But
can she change [her campaign] enough to challenge
Yudhoyono?"
That largely depends on one thing--whether she can
persuade the country's other major parties to swing
behind her Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, or
PDI-P. Yudhoyono, whom early returns show taking 34
percent of the vote, has a fresh-faced appeal as an
outsider to presidential politics. Voters have
responded to that image as much as to his calls for
cleaner, more efficient government. But that also
means he doesn't have much of a party machine behind
him. His Democrat Party was created only late last
year, holds a mere 57 of the 550 seats in Parliament
and has only one mission--to get him elected. He
appears to have slumped in the final days of
campaigning as undecided voters returned to the
Megawati fold. "Voters probably stuck with the devil
they knew," says Wanandi. For SBY to oust Megawati in
a runoff, he'll need a much more organized
get-out-the-vote drive, particularly in the
countryside, where the Golkar machine developed by
former dictator Suharto remains strong. To fend off
the challenge, Megawati will first of all need to deny
Yudhoyono that kind of support.
Both sides are thus zeroing in on Golkar, whose
candidate, former military chief and indicted
war-crimes suspect General Wiranto, trails Megawati in
the early returns 22 to 26 percent. The party has
millions of members and piles of cash; while SBY has
had great success enticing voters to cross party
lines, he'll need a much more sizable war chest to
take on the PDI-P head-to-head. In return, Golkar
Chairman Akbar Tanjung, the country's current
Parliament speaker, is expected to demand key cabinet
posts for loyalists. Sources tell NEWSWEEK that both
Yudhoyono and Megawati are already holding talks with
Tanjung, who, having failed to win the Golkar
nomination for president, has positioned himself as
kingmaker.
Many observers think Megawati may have planned for
such an eventuality; she's kept lines of communication
open to Tanjung and other Golkar leaders for months.
Indeed, Golkar and the PDI-P have worked together to
dominate Parliament for the past five years. They
successfully conspired to impeach President
Abdurrahman Wahid for alleged corruption and
incompetence in 2001, clearing the way for the then
Vice President Megawati to succeed him. But opinion is
divided about whether she or SBY would better serve
Golkar's interests. Megawati can offer Golkar prized
cabinet seats and the assurance of five more years of
political dominance. SBY, on the other hand, can
probably offer even more political posts, since he
will need to form a coalition in Parliament if
elected.
The fact that Yudhoyono is the front runner--an
estimated 31 percent of Golkar supporters voted for
him last week--also works to his advantage. "The
undercurrent within Golkar is [for] Yudhoyono," says
Umar Juoro, an economic adviser to Golkar. "They don't
want to back a losing ticket." Still, SBY can't afford
to count on a single party, even one as powerful as
Golkar. He's also likely to make a play for votes from
Wahid's National Awakening Party, or PKB, which
supported Wiranto for president. The PKB won the third
most votes in April's parliamentary elections and is
very popular in East Java, the country's largest
voting province. Given Megawati's role in Wahid's
impeachment three years ago, SBY is probably banking
on his support. And seeing how the Islamic parties
have castigated Megawati for her failure to curb
corruption, they may also be likely to throw their
support to Yudhoyono.
Of course, there's still the question of how much
power the major parties really wield in Indonesia
after six years of corruption, stagnation and
incompetent leadership. Given that the vote for
president is now direct, charisma is playing a much
larger role than in any previous election. SBY, with
his boyish good looks and reputation as a no-nonsense
reformer, wins that battle hands down. The dour
Megawati, by contrast, is seen by many as arrogant and
oblivious to the plight of tens of millions of poor
Indonesians. Where her administration has had some
success--in tamping down religious violence in the
Moluccas, for instance--much of the credit has gone to
SBY, who spoke out on such issues as her coordinating
minister for Politics and Security. "Megawati
represents the corrupt political elite that has ruled
this country for 50 years," says a Western diplomat.
"Yudhoyono is something new, someone who says he will
shake things up."
Megawati is expected to take a breather in the coming
weeks, but she can't rest for too long. Uncomfortable
with speaking to reporters or the public, she was
foundering on the campaign trail until she began a
series of successful stump speeches across the country
in the last few weeks. Some analysts expect her
campaign to start putting students and human-rights
activists into the streets later this summer to
highlight the fact that Yudhoyono is a former
general--something that may not sit well with voters
who remember the heavy hand of the Suharto regime.
Unlike Wiranto, who was indicted last year by a United
Nations-backed war-crimes tribunal in East Timor,
Yudhoyono has never been implicated in human-rights
abuses. But in 1996 he was chief of staff of the
Jakarta military command when military-backed mobs
attacked the headquarters of Megawati's party, killing
five people and leaving at least 23 others missing.
Yudhoyono's camp professes not to be worried and
frames the debate as a stark choice between an
energetic new leader and a speechless, status quo
president unresponsive to her country's problems. "Are
we going to choose a person who we already know
couldn't make it, or are we going to try a new
person?" says political analyst Salim Said. "That is
the question for Indonesia." If Indonesians see it
that way, then Megawati may be crying in September,
too.
Newsweek International
� 1998-2004 Newsweek, Inc.
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