Polling day arrives after violent campaign

JAKARTA (JP): Outbreaks of violence across the country since mid last year are the backdrop for today's general election, the seventh since independence in 1945.

Reeling from the worst violence of the 27-day campaign which ended last Friday, locals in riot-stricken towns such as Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan and Pasuruan in East Java will flock this morning to some of the country's 305,219 polling stations.

Among the 124,740,987 registered voters are about 20 million young people who will cast their ballots for the first time, while 1,781,614 people vote at embassies overseas.

Polling stations will be open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Three and a half million people, mostly civil servants, will help run the poll to ensure that preliminary results will be available within 24 hours. But a final result will not be declared until June 17, with results trickling in from across this archipelago of more than 17,500 islands stretching 5,000 kilometers along the equator.

The election will decide who will occupy seats in the House of Representatives, provincial legislative councils and regency or mayoralty councils.

Four hundred and twenty-five of the 500 seats in the House of Representatives will be contested. The other 75 seats are reserved for the Armed Forces, whose members do not vote.

Voters will not directly elect candidates when they vote for the parties, which will allocate seats won among their candidates.

Under a proportional representation system, the 425 seats in the House are divided among the 27 provinces. West Java, the province with the most voters, is represented by 68 seats. East Java has the second highest representation with 64 seats and Central Java has 59 seats. The vast province of Irian Jaya has 10 seats because of its sparse population.

Golkar now holds 282 seats in the House. The Moslem-based United Development Party (PPP) holds 62 seats and the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), an alliance of nationalist and Christian parties, holds 56 seats.

Jakarta, where the contest is expected to be fierce, is represented by 18 seats in the House. At the last election in 1992, Golkar won eight of Jakarta's 14 available seats, while the PPP and PDI won three seats each.

Golkar is assured a comfortable victory in this year's election, but analysts will carefully study the results of the PPP, which is believed to be enjoying spill-over of support from the split-ridden PDI.

Golkar is aiming to win 70.02 percent of the vote for the House this year. The PPP is hoping for a significant increase on the 17 percent that it won in 1992, while Soerjadi, the government-backed PDI chairman, said he would be happy with his party picking up its rivals' leftovers.

The PPP is hoping for a strong showing in its traditional areas of support in Central, East and West Java and in Jakarta.

Analysts will also study the size of the Golput (White Group) outcome of people spoiling their ballots or abstaining from voting as a form of protest.

Premature

Golkar has repeatedly been accused of premature electioneering, with some saying the party started campaigning in 1993 under the leadership of Minister of Information Harmoko.

Burdened with the expectation that he could increase Golkar's vote, which fell to 68 percent in 1992 from 73 percent in 1987, Harmoko pledged that no day would pass without him trying to mobilize support. He traipsed thousands of kilometers across the country each year to garner more support.

The PPP has been through a metamorphosis in recent few years. Led by the quiet, bespectacled Ismail Hasan Metareum, whose "cool party leadership" principle, has often been interpreted as meekness, the PPP became more daring as the election approached. Ismail became increasingly outspoken and critical of Golkar and the government.

Some analysts said this was an on-target political maneuver because the PPP could no longer use Islamic issues to lure Moslem voters, who are the majority, because Golkar and the PDI were also working hard to appear Islamic.

Whether Ismail's newly found outspokenness was the reason, the PPP strongly challenged Golkar during campaigning.

Some analysts attributed the PPP's extra strength to an influx of support from people loyal to the ousted PDI chief, Megawati Soekarnoputri. They created a new force symbolized by the phrase Mega-bintang; Mega is a nickname for Megawati and bintang (star) is the PPP's symbol.

The unlikely political alliance grew so much in the final days of the campaign that it even seemed to threaten Golkar.

The government lashed back by banning all expressions of the alliance, which was further undermined when Megawati announced on May 22, a day before campaigning ended, that she would not vote.

Analysts believe that this declaration will be imitated by many of her loyalists and push up the number of nonvoters.

Violent

This year's campaign will be remembered for its violence. Some analysts have called it the most violent campaign in the country's history, with the worst incident in Banjarmasin killing 123 people. More trouble is feared if the PPP says that it has been cheated during voting or ballot counting.

Political analysts blamed the violence on political rivalry, youthful exuberance and dissatisfaction and frustration with the government and system during an outpouring of political passion allowed only once every five years.

"This year's election campaign is the most violent in the history of the New Order government," an analyst said.

"When campaigning begins, party supporters can only see it as a place to break free, violate all the rules and take revenge... Elections are no longer seen as a chance to choose peoples' representatives, because nothing has ever changed following an election," said Loekman Soetrisno, a professor of sociology at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta.

Loekman warned that the situation could be the beginning of civil unrest. "It's still embryonic, but the government must pay close attention to it," he said. (swe)