Ruling Golkar looking at biggest win ever

JAKARTA (JP): Preliminary results of yesterday's general election showed Golkar heading for another landslide victory as it won more than 87 percent of the vote.

With 6.5 percent of ballots counted by 9:20 p.m., Golkar had won 7,127,499 of the 8,188,307 votes counted, the General Elections Committee announced.

The United Development Party (PPP), which was expected to mount the most serious challenge to Golkar, had won 893,968 votes while the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) was a very distant third with just 166,840.

It is not immediately known how many ballots were spoilt or how many people did not vote.

In the 1992 election Golkar won 68.11 percent of the vote while PPP had 17 percent and PDI 14.9 percent.

Golkar chief Harmoko expects his party will win 70.02 percent of the vote this year.

Across the country, 305,219 polling stations were open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. to receive ballot papers from 124,740,987 eligible voters.

The first results of ballot counting were announced by Minister of Home Affairs Moch. Yogie SM in a nationwide telecast at 7:45 p.m. from the elections committee's head office in Central Jakarta.

The first tally of 2.5 million votes showed that Golkar had a stunning lead of almost 92 percent of the vote.

A provisional tally of about 90 percent of the vote is expected to be announced this afternoon.

The election went smoothly in most of the country, but there were isolated incidents in some provinces.

Elections committee officials said they were satisfied with the proceedings.

The committee's secretary, Suryatna Subrata, said yesterday evening there had been no worrying cases to report of during the election.

"Well there were some disturbances at a few polling booths in a few regions," he said. When pressed what he meant by "disturbances," Suryatna vaguely called them "individual voter dissonance".

Minister Yogie said the initial results of the tally were transmitted to the committee through various communication links including telephones, facsimiles and citizen band radio.

But Golkar's stunning lead has been met by some skepticism.

Stopping short of an accusation, PPP Secretary General Tosari Wijaya said the first announced results differed greatly from his party's own voting reports.

He questioned how Yogie in his first announcement could say that the nationwide result for PPP was only 160,083, when a rough count for PPP in Surabaya, East Java, puts it at over 251,000.

Tosari claimed that he had also received 10 to 15 complaints about the ballot counting.

Among the complaints were from East Java where ballots were not counted at the polling station as required, but at district offices.

Tosari then said he received reports of PPP members being subjected to physical violence by village and district chiefs in his party's efforts to monitor the poll counts.

He said PPP members were not able to monitor the poll booths.

PDI chairman Soerjadi and other executives were unavailable for comment as the results were announced yesterday.

The largest number of votes counted yesterday was in Central Java with more than 2.1 million before midnight. Golkar got 1.6 million of them while PPP got about 444,000.

There are 19.6 million eligible voters in Central Java.

Golkar is expected repeat its sweep of Java which has the highest concentration of voters.

West Java has the largest number of eligible voters with 25.4 million. Yesterday evening only 815,089 votes had been tallied there of which 728,040 went to Golkar. PPP received 80,023 and PDI limped in with 7,026.

Results from East Java were still in the earliest stages of counting with only 224,800 votes. But the Golkar train looked like sweeping through as it already had almost 195,000 votes.

Bali, which has just over two million voters, was going totally Golkar which had 736,574 of the 770,358 votes tallied.

Eerie

In Jakarta more than 7.4 million people were eligible to vote. Under the scrutiny of 25,000 security personnel, Jakartans went to the polls at the 20,000 polling stations throughout the city.

An eerie calm set about the city as normally traffic clogged streets were free of congestion. After voting, residents remained indoors.

Many employees were given half-days while a noticeable number of shops in shopping centers were closed. Public transport was scarcer than usual.

After the initial ballot casting, public attention in many areas was meek. In South Jakarta, ballot counting was only witnessed by small crowds, most of whom were assigned as volunteers to the polling station.

At polling station 25 for the Kramat Pela subdistrict, located next to the Blok M Plaza mall, most people choose to wander in and out of the shopping center rather than view the results of the ballot count.

A minor incident occurred later yesterday in Kebayoran Lama, South Jakarta, when a group of youths donning green paraphenelia of the PPP made a small motorcycle convoy. Police quickly rushed to stop them.

As of yesterday evening only 211,558 of votes from Jakarta had been counted. Golkar got the lion's share with 144,709. PPP received 63,721 votes and PDI 3,128.

During the 1992 elections, Golkar received 54 percent of the votes while PPP and PDI split the remainder. (team)