Polling day arrives after violent campaign

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)