Democrats, PKS dominate race in the capital

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The surprisingly strong showing by two new parties -- with some 20 percent of the votes tallied -- in the legislative election has drawn a lot of attention among commentators.

Emil Salim, a respected economist who held a number of ministerial posts under former president Soeharto, said that it was indicative of a strong desire for change, because millions of voters have chosen the new Democratic Party and the six-year-old Prosperous Justice Party (PKS). Both seem to be completely different in many ways from the established parties.

As of 10 p.m. on Wednesday, with a third of all the Jakarta votes counted PKS (22.89 percent) had a slight lead over the Democrats (20.19 percent) in the race for legislative dominance in the capital, with PDI-P a very distant third with just over 10 percent.

With over 25.5 million of a possible 140 million votes tallied nationwide, the Democrats were holding fifth place behind the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), Golkar, the National Awakening Party (PKB) cofounded by former president Abdurrahman Wahid and the United Development Party (PPP).

Unlike the other four, the year-old Democratic Party is not known for its wide network and appears to have attracted a lot of support because of its cofounder, former security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Meanwhile, PKS -- sixth nationwide as of 10 p.m. -- is known as an Islamic-oriented party set up ahead of the 1999 elections. It has many educated activists, who have worked diligently to build up a mass base, initially in the cities and at schools.

Emil added that people were attracted not only by PKS' staunch anticorruption theme, but also because they observed that the party leaders seemed to practice what they preach.

Emil said their performance, which he said was fairly clean, in the country's legislative bodies in the past five years, was the key to PKS' success.

"Like PKS, many parties also raised the theme of corruption, collusion, and nepotism in their campaigns. But PKS impressed people because of its leaders' performance," Emil said.

Regarding the Democrats, Emil said that the appealing figure of Susilo indicated that people wanted a new leader.

"If people were impressed by PKS because of its anti- corruption move, they were even more impressed by the Democratic Party because they saw SBY (Susilo) as a prospective leader. The bottom line is people desire a change," he said.

Emil added that another message from the early results is that the much feared impact of bribery, which has always been reported in past elections, had likely not figured significantly this time around.

"It means that people's votes cannot be bought because a party like PKS and the Democrat Party definitely did not have enough money to engage in vote-buying during the campaigns," he added.