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)