Indonesia: Hitches can't hide democracy's
gains By Andreas Harsono
JAKARTA - In a reflection of previous elections,
Monday's parliamentary poll in Indonesia did not go off
without a hitch. Some parts of the country were not able
to organize the election after they ran into logistical
and technical problems, such as ballots that failed to
reach polling places in time - a delay that angered Vice
President Hamzah Haz, who charged that the
administration of this election was worse than in the
1999 poll.
"Two of my sons just recently
received their voting cards," Hamzah said. "They are the
sons of the vice president. What happened to others?"
Meanwhile, in Aceh province in northern Sumatra,
police said about 50 villages did not even hold the
election because they are still under the control of the
Free Aceh Movement that seeks independence from Jakarta.
But despite these problems, the conduct of the
vote - a successful display of free and fair elections -
affirms the democratic path Indonesia has been treading
since the Suharto regime ended six years ago, and will
bolster its still-emerging democracy.
Although
it is not yet clear what percentage of the approximately
147 million eligible voters were not able to cast their
ballots, more than 140 million Indonesians went to the
voting booths on Monday morning - a massive logistical
exercise for the world's fourth-most-populous country,
comprising a wide mix of ethnic communities that speak
hundreds of different languages.
Monday's
election also involved more than 5.2 million poll
officials working in nearly 600,000 polling stations
throughout the world's largest archipelago. In addition,
the European Union sent its largest-ever electoral
monitoring mission composed of more than 230 observers
across Indonesia.
The election was only the
first part of an eventual three-step process. A direct
poll for the president will be held in July, and if no
candidate has won more than 50 percent of the vote,
which is very likely, a final presidential election will
be held in September.
Moreover, the vote also
marked the start of a complicated - one commentator
called it "mind-boggling" - process of voting for
different sets of officials in Indonesia. On Monday,
voters chose from more than 7,700 candidates from 24
political parties, for the 550-member parliament, apart
from tens of thousands of other candidates for regional,
provincial and local legislatures.
As of Monday
night, the national tally of the votes, announced from
Hotel Borobudur in downtown Jakarta, showed only
insignificant results of the few thousand votes that had
been counted. Given the size of Indonesia, it may take
nine days or more before national results can be
completed.
In parts of the country that were not
able to organize the election because the voting
documents were printed incorrectly, or were not
delivered at all, voting would have to be held on
Tuesday or Wednesday, said Election Commissioner
Nasruddin Syamsuddin.
According to Indonesian
media, these areas include some parts of Central
Sulawesi, West Sumatra and Nusa Tenggara Timur in
eastern Indonesia. Papua, the resource-rich island
province in eastern Indonesia, also faced similar
problems.
Central Sulawesi Governor Aminuddin
Ponulele said about 200,000 or around 10 percent of
voters in his province did not get their
voting-registration documents. And Dominggus Mandacan,
the regent of Manokwari regency in Papua, was quoted by
Antara news agency as saying that 48 of the 585 voting
booths in his area could not organize the election. "The
organizers simply had not received the voting papers,"
Mandacan said.
But for those who could cast
their vote, many took the election seriously on Monday -
a day that was declared a national holiday for the
balloting.
"I have been on the street since 9
this morning, and only at 1pm people were seen on the
streets again," said Express Taxi driver Karno, adding
that he only got three passengers during the entire
four-hour period because people were heading for their
polling precincts in Jakarta.
The Palmerah
traditional market, a bustling bazaar filled with
vegetables, meat, fish and other food, near the
Parliament building, was also half-empty on Monday
morning.
And though final results have yet to be
announced, analysts and voters are watching out for
trends and key political battles in the election, which
largely could impact the forthcoming presidential
elections as well.
In East Java, Indonesia's
second-most-populous province, President Megawati
Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle
(PDI-P) was competing fiercely with the National
Awakening Party of former president Abdurrahman Wahid.
Megawati voted in her elite neighborhood in the
Menteng area in the heart of Jakarta, where
surprisingly, vote counting was in favor of two
little-known parties. First place went to the Democrat
Party with 45 votes, while the Peace and Prosperous
Party took second place. Megawati's PDI-P secured the
third place with 34 votes, and with 24 votes, fourth
place went to the Golkar Party, established by Suharto
in the 1960s, and whose political fortunes many expect
to improve in this election.
Overall, surveys
show Megawati's PDI-P in a tight race with its rival
Golkar. While Megawati is ahead of Golkar's leading
candidate Akbar Tanjung, an International Foundation for
Election Systems poll of 4,000 respondents concluded on
March 28 found that Golkar had the most party support,
with 22.2 percent. That figure is almost double the 11.5
percent share of support PDI-P received in the poll.
Aside from Megawati, Suharto himself voted in
another booth in Menteng. Emerging from his house with a
walking stick, Suharto, 82, did not respond to
reporters' questions, but simply smiled and waved his
hands.
Opinion polls also show Megawati trailing
for the first time in the presidential race set for
July. She was lagging behind her former chief security
minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a respected retired
general who leads the Democrat Party and who quit the
cabinet in March after a row with Megawati.
