Street rallies continue ahead of crucial election

Street rallies continue ahead of crucial election

JAKARTA (JP): Tension in the capital rose on Tuesday as mass
rallies clogged major thoroughfares 24 hours ahead of the
momentous presidential election.

Although the capital has been free of clashes for the past
four days, many Jakartans fear that street rallies will
degenerate into bloody battles between supporters of President
B.J. Habibie and Megawati Soekarnoputri, two main contenders in
Wednesday's election.

There was some light traffic congestion around the city as a
result of Tuesday's rallies, but the backups were not as bad as
on previous days.

The day's rallies got off to a start at around 10 a.m. with
the appearance of hundreds of security task force members from
Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI
Perjuangan) at the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle in Central
Jakarta, which has been officially off-limits to demonstrators
since Monday.

The number of demonstrators grew to the thousands as Megawati
supporters streamed into the area, parading around the traffic
circle carrying banners and posters and chanting slogans,
including "Long live Mega", "Without Mega, Revolution" and "Hang
Habibie".

On the nearby Jl. Kebon Kacang, dozens of Habibie supporters
from the United Development Party's Ka'bah Youth Movement
approached the traffic circle, causing the tension to rise.

The groups seemed ready to come to blows before riot troops
deployed to the area were able to calm the situation.

Some 100 members of PDI Perjuangan's security task force
maintained their vigil at the traffic circle until late into
Tuesday night, saying they were afraid if they left the traffic
circle would be occupied by other groups.

A few kilometers south of Hotel Indonesia, some 500 white-
collar employees from the Jakarta Stock Exchange (JSX) building
staged their second consecutive day of protests, demanding that
Habibie drop his bid for the presidency.

As this protest was ending at about 1:45 p.m., a group of some
7,000 people, mostly attired in Islamic dress, marched along Jl.
Sudirman in front of the JSX building singing anti-Megawati
protest songs.

Calling themselves the Student, Youth and People's Movement,
they carried banners and posters to express their opposition to
Megawati, who they accused of "hiring hoodlums to cause chaos".

"Why does she always have to use hoodlums to create bad
situations? Why?

"Are we animals that she has to hire hoodlums? We are all
against Megawati's hoodlums," one of the demonstrators told The
Jakarta Post as he marched toward the People's Consultative
Assembly from Al-Azhar Grand Mosque in South Jakarta.

He added that the majority of the demonstrators came from
across Java, particularly West and East Java.

The demonstrators were allowed by riot troops to proceed down
Jl. Sudirman and Jl. Gatot Subroto, two of the three streets from
which protesters are temporarily prohibited, before they ran up
against a security cordon at the Senayan flyover near the
Assembly.

After staging a free-speech forum, the demonstrators returned
to the mosque in South Jakarta at 3 p.m. under the watchful eyes
of some 500 police officers.

Around the same time, a group of 30 students from Ibnu Chaldun
University arrived at the JSX building to challenge the anti-
Habibie demonstrators.

The group of Habibie supporters were prevented from entering
the building by security guards.

JSX employees jeered from inside the building, causing the
students vainly to attempt to break free from the security guards
and force their way into the building.

Meanwhile, as hundreds of PDI Perjuangan supporters milled
around the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle at 4 p.m., one of the
supporters attempting to climb the Welcome Monument located in
the middle of the traffic circle lost his grip and plummeted into
the pond which encircles the monument.

The badly injured man was rushed to Cipto Mangunkusumo General
Hospital, where his condition is unknown.

An hour before this incident, a foreigner watching the crowd
at the traffic circle from the swimming pool located on the fifth
floor of the nearby Mandarin Oriental Hotel attracted the crowd's
attention.

Angered by the sight of the man wearing only his swimming
trunks, the crowd rushed to the hotel and attempted to enter the
premises, shouting that "such an act was not a part of Indonesian
culture". Security guards managed to stop the mob from entering
the hotel.

From Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, national flag
carrier Garuda Indonesia said flights from Jakarta to Singapore
for Wednesday were fully booked.

"The increase in the number of passengers began on Tuesday," a
Garuda staff member told the Post on Tuesday. (04/udi/ylt/asa)