Megawati has supporters

I read with interest Sungkowo Sokawera's letter Who supports Megawati, published in The Jakarta post on Aug. 6, 1999. The question he posed was which people really supported Megawati? He is of the opinion that the 200 seats for the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) in the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) are insignificant compared to the 700 seats available in that legislature. Also the number of 38,089,077 people who voted for PDI Perjuangan in the June general election is still less than the total number of people living below the poverty line, which was put at 49.5 million at the end of 1998.

By asking "Who supports Megawati", Mr. Sungkowo implies that Megawati has virtually no supporters in Indonesia considering that the whole population is a little over 206 million.

My question to Mr. Sungkowo is: "Are you happy to see that the fourth president is Habibie who was nominated by the Golkar party which is second in rank in terms of votes collected after PDI Perjuangan? Or is it fair if Amien Rais is unexpectedly elected president? More extreme still, do you wish that a man out of the blue is elected to be the next president? Are these people with smaller number of supporters much better than Megawati?

I would like to say that whoever is elected to be the future president is most welcome by me. But more so if the president elect is from the party which was victorious in the June elections.

WISNU W.

Denpasar, Bali