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Setback for favourite in Indonesia poll

By Graham Cooke - posted Monday, 28 April 2014


While the final results in Indonesia's parliamentary elections will not be known until next month, it appears no one party has secured enough seats or votes to nominate a candidate for the presidency.

Under the country's electoral laws only parties receiving 25 per cent of the vote or 20 per cent of the seats in the 560-member Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (national parliament) can put forward their preferred candidate for the presidential election, which takes place in July.

This means that the larger parties, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), Golkar and the Greater Indonesian Movement (Gerindra) will have to negotiate with smaller groups and independents if they want to get their presidential nominees across the line as well as forming a government with a majority in the next parliament.

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This is a significant blow to the presidential front runner, Joko Widodo, of the PDIP, which is likely to fall just short on the vote count at around 19 per cent. This might not have been such a disaster had PDIP not been talking up its prospects before the polls, with some officials saying it would get as much as 30 per cent of the vote.

In addition, Widodo has for months been considered the 'president in waiting' to succeed President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who is constitutionally barred from a third term. The popular Governor of Jakarta gloried in his nickname of Jokowi, and the 'Jokowi effect' was expected to sweep him into office, if not in a landslide, then by a comfortable margin.

Now he has been brought solidly back to earth and has had to scrabble around for the necessary support. In my four decades of covering elections in various countries it is almost a rule that early front runners, if receiving a setback, suffer reverse momentum and find it hard to reclaim lost ground.

Already the detractors are making themselves heard with a current PDIP Member of Parliament, Budiman Sudjatmiko, calling for an internal evaluation of the parliamentary campaign, suggesting that the party did not work hard enough, assuming the election was already in the bag.

Other observers are beginning to see Widodo's closeness to PDIP chairwomen and former national president Megawati Sukarnoputri as a liability.

Widodo is now in damage control, saying the presidential poll will require a quite different strategy. "There will be only three or four candidates in the race; the parliamentary race had 6600 candidates," he is reported as saying

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After the dust has cleared Widodo will probably go into the mix with two other candidates, Aburizal Bakrie for Golkar and Prabowo Subianto (Gerindra).

Bakrie is a successful businessman, but little known to the electorate at large. Moreover his path to the party's nomination last June is strewn with controversy with many insiders saying it was rushed through without proper consultation of members, or the opportunity to put up an alternative candidate.

However, the official party line was that whoever was the candidate needed plenty of time to gain a profile among Indonesia's 187 million voters, especially as Widodo already had a big advantage in this area.

Golkar, which once dominated Indonesian politics under the autocratic President Suharto, won about 15 per cent of the vote and Bakrie will have to work hard to raise his profile among Indonesians who don't know him, and to dispel his negative image among many of those who do.

Prabowo is perhaps the most controversial candidate. Related through marriage to President Suharto, he was a senior commander in the armed forces at the time Suharto's dictatorial regime was toppling. It is alleged that troops under his command kidnapped and tortured democracy activists. He eventually lost out in a power struggle with another prominent general, Wiranto and was forced out of the military.

Since then he has followed a successful career as a businessman in industries that include pulp and paper, oil, natural gas and fisheries.

Gerindra, formed for the sole purpose of supporting Prabowo who resigned from Golkar in 2008, did well to pick up an estimated 12 per cent of the vote.

The Democrat Party of current president Yudhoyono slumped from 21 per cent at the last legislative election in 2009 to less than 10 per cent this time. It has no real chance of gaining enough support to field a candidate of its own, but could play a key role in supporting one of the big three.

With so much uncertainty, there is a slight possibility that a fourth candidate will emerge should the country's Islamic parties unite behind one contender.

This is certainly the wish of the Chairman of the Indonesian Ulema Council, Din Syamsuddin, arguably the most influential Muslim leader in the country. He says he has received floods of calls from Muslims asking the Islamic parties to enter the fray especially as they did better than expected in the parliamentary contest.

However, the likelihood of the parties settling their many differences to agree on a single candidate is considered unlikely.

The result of the election will be watched with interest by the Australian government which has seen relations with its close neighbour flounder over Canberra's policy of towing refugee boats back into Indonesian waters.

The feeling in Jakarta is that it is Australia that must work to improve relations, but with Indonesia now firmly in election mode, any initiatives will have to wait until Canberra knows who it will be dealing with over the next five years.

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About the Author

Graham Cooke has been a journalist for more than four decades, having lived in England, Northern Ireland, New Zealand and Australia, for a lengthy period covering the diplomatic round for The Canberra Times.


He has travelled to and reported on events in more than 20 countries, including an extended stay in the Middle East. Based in Canberra, where he obtains casual employment as a speech writer in the Australian Public Service, he continues to find occasional assignments overseas, supporting the coverage of international news organisations.

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