YESTERDAY’S PARLIAMENTARY elections in Indonesia yielded mixed results for reformist president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has been credited with curbing Islamic militants and shielding the country from the worst of the global economic recession.
Mr Yudhoyono will probably run in presidential elections in July after his Democratic Party secured more than 20 per cent of parliament seats, the quota required to entitle a political party to nominate a candidate for the presidential race.
Pre-election polls suggested a wider victory margin for Mr Yudhoyono who could now face former president Megawati Soekarnoputri, if her runner-up Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle succeeds in welding a parliamentary alliance to nominate her.
Yesterday’s vote was the third since the ousting of former dictator Suharto, whose Golkar party looks like securing third place.
Mr Yudhoyono, a media-friendly leader vocal in his support for business, has ruled an alliance of disparate groupings which has been blamed for blocking his promises to reform Indonesia’s chronically corrupt economy and bureaucracy.
Economic growth has stayed steady at a likely 3 per cent this year, thanks to strong local consumption, but foreign investment will be needed to end persistent inequality, another Democratic Party pledge to 171 million voters registered for the election.
Mr Yudhoyono has also been credited with Indonesia’s clampdown on Islamic-inspired terrorism in the wake of 2002 bomb attacks in the tourist island of Bali. But problems remain in the semi-autonomous territory of Aceh where conservative Islamic parties have battled central authorities for autonomy and Sharia law. Five protesters died on the eve of the election in the eastern region of Papua, in clashes between independence and pro-Jakarta forces.
Indonesia’s minority Christian and Hindu populations have chafed at the influence of Islamic groupings supporting the incumbent administration.
Campaigns against pornography and the Islamic-oriented Ahmadiyah sect have also dismayed a moderate Sunni majority which has preferred to see the election race in economic terms.
Locals queued under white tents which sprung up across Jakarta early Thursday morning. Despite criticism of late-arriving election materials, the capital seemed to have a polling station on every block. At one open-air station opposite a mosque on Timur Gang street, 24-year-old translator Marta Sinaga was facing bewildering charts of parties and candidates (44 political parties contested nationwide).
“It’s complicated,” she says before pointing to a female candidate, Carmen Elisabeth Manthey from the Indonesian Workers’ and Employers’ Party party, and giving a thumbs-up sign. It is one of a raft of smaller Indonesian parties that campaigned on labour and economic issues, but is unlikely to be one of those with the mandatory 2.5 per cent of the vote required to take a seat in parliament.
Whoever wins the poll has to battle corruption and shaky infrastructure, which hamper economic growth. Unique for an Asian capital its size, Jakarata has no urban rail system while highways through much of the country are rudimentary at best.
The sprawling, low-rise city was unusually quiet yesterday because of a weekend holiday. The break was welcomed by some Jakartans, with locals pouring on to trains and buses bound eastwards for coastal cities on Java.
Wary perhaps of the tumult that followed previous elections – pro-Megawati riots in 1999 – security was tight around government buildings. Squadrons of police grouped under large brown tents, with armoured cars and water cannon parked opposite the presidential palace.
“Indonesian people have big emotion (sic),” says motorbike courier Anwar, who voted for the president’s party. He judged candidates on their policies for solving Jakarta’s chronic traffic jams and curbing poverty. A cross-town trip can take up to two hours, while low-wage families such as his live in slums. Anwar grumbles that most families in his quarter, in Kota, the old Dutch colonial quarter, cannot afford to educate their children.
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, has glimpsed the possibilities of democracy from an unlikely source. Near the Monas national monument to statehood street artists hawk portraits: images of the local president easily outnumber those of American president and one-time Indonesian resident Barack Obama.