INDONESIA:Interaction with voters is likely to replace mass rallies as election nears, writes John Aglionbyin Jakarta
SUPRIAWATI, WHO runs a street-side fried rice stall in south Jakarta, counted herself among the undecided as Indonesia's parliamentary election campaign kicked off at the weekend.
"I can't really tell one party from another," she says. "The politicians only seem to be interested in themselves and not us, the little people."
The good news for the 34 parties contesting the election, including 18 new ones, is that they still have nine months to convince the mother of three young children - and Indonesia's 150 million other eligible voters - why they deserve support.
Politicians and analysts are convinced this campaign is going to be completely different from the last election in 2004 and not only because, at 39 weeks, it is 13 times longer. In just a decade, Indonesia has become the largest and one of the most robust democracies in the Muslim world.
"People are more critical now," said Syarief Hasan, the head of the parliamentary faction of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democrat party.
"They realise who their representatives are, how the parties are performing and how the current representatives are communicating with them."
Growing voter interest in politics is clear from the fact that since the 2004 election, most Indonesians have voted at least once to elect directly their regional leaders, and some two-thirds of incumbents have failed to win a second term.
Party bosses acknowledge that with rising voter sophistication they have to adjust campaign tactics. The traditional mass rallies-cum-pop concerts that dominated past campaigns are likely to be superseded by more direct interaction with voters.
Rully Azwar, the head of campaigning for Golkar, the political vehicle of the former dictator Suharto and still the largest party in parliament with 128 of the 550 seats, is assigning 10 volunteers to each of the 300,000 polling stations.
"Each volunteer will be expected to win over at least 15 voters," he said. "We've never implemented such a strategy before but it's clear that we have to go door to door to win. We have to explain the issues."
Parties are taking their lead from the Islamic-oriented Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), which increased its representation in parliament sixfold in 2004 to 45 seats.
Paul Rowland, Indonesia head of the National Democratic Institute, an American democracy education organisation, said: "Parties are beginning to understand that PKS didn't quadruple [sic] its vote because people are interested in an Islamic agenda. They quadrupled their vote because they had an extremely simple message, which was delivered effectively to a large number of households."
Tifatul Sembiring, the head of PKS, said his party's campaign this time would be a combination of "air attack, artillery and infantry", meaning, respectively, massive media campaigns, direct targeting of voters through internet and mobile phone text messaging, and direct engagement with voters both through door-to-door campaigning and in small groups.
Mass rallies will not be abandoned, however, because most parties predict at least half of the electorate - particularly in rural areas - will vote not on issues but on traditional sociological loyalties. "The number of rational voters is only about 20 per cent," Rully said. "So we cannot neglect the others."
Most observers accept that if the election were today, the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), led by former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, would win a decisive plurality because of the government's unpopular decision to increase fuel prices.
Golkar and the Democrats, the two dominant parties of government, are likely to be the big losers unless the economy turns round in the next nine months. They say they are going to remind voters that their policies were partly triggered by Megawati's refusal to raise fuel prices when in office.
One dynamic unlikely to change, most politicians believe, is that Islamic parties are unlikely to increase their share of the vote from the current one-third. Pramono Anung, the PDIP secretary general, said: "Most Indonesians are Muslim but not in the same way as the Arabs. Here Islam is more a cultural tradition, whereas in political affairs people are secular."
But, as Supriawati hinted, the parties' greatest challenge is to overcome dissatisfaction with parliament. Five legislators are under arrest for alleged graft and in a recent survey parliament was considered the most corrupt public institution.
Polling is on April 9th and will be followed within three months by a presidential vote. - (Financial Times service)