Democrats, PKS dominate race in the capital

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.