Max Lane
Former general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono appears to be the front-runner in Indonesia's presidential election, to be held on July 5. Some political analysts say he will win more than 50% of the vote, meaning there would be no need for a September run-off.
However, other pollsters are sceptical. They note that the polls that put Yudhoyono in the lead have all been taken in the big cities, using either telephone polling or small focus groups, and are therefore unrepresentative of Indonesia's voting public.
According to a poll conducted by the Washington-based International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), released on June 23, 45% of those surveyed support Yudhoyono. Running a distant second in the polls is former general Wiranto, on 11.4% according to the IFES poll.
President Megawati Sukarnoputri is in third place, with the support of 11% of voters. Trailing her are Amien Rais, head of the country's legislature for the past five years, and Megawati's vice-president, Hamzah Haz, each with less than 10% support.
One theme that comes up again and again in the mainstream Indonesian media is that this is contest between "popularity" and "political machine". Yudhoyono, who was a cabinet minister in both the Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati governments, has achieved a high level of television profile during the last five years.
At the same time, Yudhoyono has avoided being stamped as close to any of the big business conglomerates and has generally managed to have his role in former dictator Suharto's military machine forgotten. But his new Democrat Party is small and has no machinery, scoring only 7.5% in April's parliamentary elections.
The fourth presidential candidate, Amien Rais, is in a similar position to Yudhoyono. Rais' National Mandate Party (PAN) also has no machinery and scored 6.4% in the parliamentary elections. But he has a high profile as one of the mainstream figures who opposed Suharto during the weeks prior to the dictator's downfall in May 1998.
Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) and Wiranto's Golkar have big party machines, although the PDIP's apparatus tends to be mainly in Java and Golkar's outside Java. These machines are able to get their candidates' message to the 100 million voters in the small towns and villages, as well as the big city kampung (urban neighbourhoods).
Hamzah Haz is backed by the religious United Development Party (PPP), which has a small electoral machine, limited to a few specific areas only.
Much media discussion is now based around the question: What will win — image or machine?
The reason why nobody is really confident to answer this question is that it has been almost 40 years since political party competition has taken place in an atmosphere free of government coercion and military repression. Can political machines, even when they are handing out money, deliver votes when they are not backed up by the threat of violence, imprisonment or other harassment? Does the fact that candidates like Yudhoyono and Rais are essentially creations of the Jakarta political scene mean that without party machines in the provinces, their popular appeal won't reach down to village, kampung and small town?
None of the five candidates are discussing the country's socio-economic crisis or offering any clear policy responses. The assumption is that none are proposing anything very different from what has been implemented by the Megawati government, under the general guidance of the International Monetary Fund. Projecting personal image, either as a firm leader or as a "man or woman of the people", visiting a local market, or being able to croon to a crowd has comprised most of the candidates' campaigning.
They do know the mood of the people though and so the general themes they vaguely articulate all mention improving the economy and employment, reviving the national education system, "reconciliation" (which means many things to many people), and no return to the ways of the Suharto dictatorship. But specifics on any of these general policies is completely lacking from the candidates' campaigns.
It is not surprising then that the other media discussion point is whether the presidential election will see the same high proportion of voters not voting as occurred with the April parliamentary elections. The May 10 Kompas daily reported that, according to data from the General Election Commission, there were 34.5 million non-voting registered voters in the April elections — 23.3% of registered voters. The highest scoring party in the April elections, Golkar, received 21.6% of the vote.
The percentage of non-voting registered voters was highest in Jakarta and West Java, reflecting the political volatility in the Jakarta metropolitan area.
On June 8, thousands of farmers demonstrated in Jakarta against the impact of deregulation in agriculture and threatened to boycott the presidential election. The deep alienation of ordinary working people from the establishment political process adds to the uncertainty of the electoral outcome since it is not clear how many registered voters will actually vote.
In the absence of any policy differences or even much pretence of such differences between the five presidential candidates, many voters — especially middle-class professionals and university students — are tending to differentiate the candidates according to whether they have a military background or not. Student groups, human rights organisations and other NGOs have been urging people not to vote for former generals. As well as Yudhoyono and Wiranto, this also includes Hamzah Haz's running-mate, Agum Gumelar, a retired four-star general.
These groups point to the role of the military under the Suharto regime and accuse Wiranto, Yudhoyono and Gumelar of having been involved in human rights abuses. These calls are often couched in warnings about the danger of a return to the militaristic rule of the Suharto era.
One coalition, the United Opposition Front, which includes the radical left-wing Peoples Democratic Party (PRD), has gone further and specified reforms that candidates should be measured against in relation to the danger of a return of militaristic rule. These include the demand for the dissolution of the territorial structure of the military, under which officers and soldiers are located in all provinces of the country.
Rais and even Megawati are gathering more support from middle-class professionals because they are not former generals. This is despite the fact they both have former generals in their campaign teams and Megawati's imposition of martial law in Aceh.
Whoever wins the presidential election, it is unlikely that there will be any change in the government's "free market" economic policies. The Indonesian economy still shows no sign of recovery from the 1997-98 crash. Unemployment continues to affect about 40 million people and more than half the population of 220 million still lives on less than $2 a day, according to the latest World Bank report, released on June 2.
According to the World Bank, services to the poor in Indonesia are among the worst in the South-East Asian region. Many primary school buildings are near to collapse, children go to school without shoes and the local puskesmas (health clinics) quickly run out of basic medicines.
Indonesia is also the only member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries to become a net oil importer. In March, the country imported an average of 484,000 barrels of crude oil a day against exports of only 448,000 barrels a day.
large portion of the population forced to live on less than US$2 a day,
From Green Left Weekly, June 30, 2004.
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