Democracy wins in Indonesian election

Democracy wins in Indonesian election

The results are not all in from last week's Indonesian
election, but however the seats in parliament are finally
allocated, the poll is a big win for the democratic process. With
140 million eligible voters and about 450,000 candidates in the
national and provincial polls, the fact the election went off so
smoothly is a good result.

Indonesians do not have a great deal of experience with
contested polls. While the last election was held in 1999, the
one before that took place in the middle 1950s. Although some
parties are demanding recounts, there does not appear to be any
pattern of wholesale corruption across the country. And for an
electorate not all that familiar with the democratic process, the
Indonesian people behaved like any other -- they gave a sluggish
government a hiding. It appears support for President Megawati
Soekarnoputri's Indonesian Party of Struggle collapsed from a
third of the national vote in 1999 to just on 20 percent this
time. This is an ominous result for Ms Megawati, who faces a
presidential poll in July. The President paid the price for her
failure to improve a stagnant economy that leaves Indonesians
with an average annual income of under $1000 a year and in which
corruption is endemic.

But while the voters have lost faith in Ms Megawati, they are
clearly committed to the ideals of representative democracy and
social tolerance. Although Indonesia is the world's largest
Muslim nation, its voters have not supported politicians tied to
Islamic fundamentalism who would have the country governed
according to extremist interpretations of the Koran. Certainly,
the religion-focused Prosperous Justice Party polled sixth, with
just under 7 percent of the votes. But it ran on policies of
anti-corruption and education, rather than religion. This result
reflects last month's election outcome in predominantly Muslim
Malaysia, where the new Prime Minister, Abdullah Badawi, promised
to end the corruption associated with the regime of his
predecessor, Mahathir Mohamad. Mr Abdullah received the mandate
that Ms Megawati was denied, winning a huge parliamentary
majority and taking back one of the two, out of 13, states
previously governed by an extreme Islamicist party. That the
Malaysian, and now the Indonesian, peoples have voted for
economic growth rather than religious rule demonstrates why
Islamic terrorists fear democracy -- they know their cause does
not attract the voters.

-- The Australian, Sydney