Megawati hangs on to runoff slot

By Alan Sipress
The Washington Post

Megawati Sukarnoputri secured a spot in runoff vote.

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More than 110 million Indonesians went to the polls in the world's most populous Muslim country's first direct presidential election. For some, the election was evidence that Islam and democracy can coexist, a matter debated as a result of the Bush administration's push to spread Democracy in the Muslim-dominated Middle East.

The election was the first presidential vote since Indonesia threw out its electoral college-style system in 2002 and instituted direct elections to select its leader.

"This is the largest direct presidential election in the history of the world," Paul Rowland, Indonesia representative of the National Democratic Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that promotes democracy, told the Los Angeles Times.

Former president Jimmy Carter, who headed a mission observing the Monday election, praised Indonesians for their "commitment to an honest and democratic procedure." He said in an interview that observers from his Carter Center had witnessed 50 elections since its founding in 1982 and none was better than the Indonesian vote.

"This is a major step forward on a global scale," Carter said. Not only had Indonesians "almost miraculously" put in place a successful democracy just six years after the end of former president Suharto's authoritarian rule, but they had demonstrated that the world's largest Muslim country could adopt a democratic system and secular government, he said.

A tally of sample districts conducted by the Washington-based National Democratic Institute showed that Megawati would qualify for the Sept. 20 presidential showdown with Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, her former chief security minister who was projected as the top finisher hours after nationwide balloting ended Monday.

The institute earlier had reported that Megawati was in a statistical dead heat for second place, but additional returns showed her outdistancing former armed-forces commander Gen. Wiranto by almost 3 percentage points.

According to this quick count, calculated from results in 1,719 polling stations, Megawati will win just over a quarter of the vote. That is far better than predicted by election-eve surveys, which suggested that the daughter of Indonesia's founding father, Sukarno, might be turned out of office by a dispirited public only three years after she ascended to the presidency.

With nearly two-fifths of the actual ballots counted by Indonesia's election commission, Yudhoyono was running first with 34 percent of the vote followed by Megawati with 27 percent. Wiranto trailed with 22 percent. Two other contenders were far behind.

Rizal Mallarangeng, a political analyst close to the president, said she had reversed her sagging fortunes by retooling her campaign strategy in recent weeks. Famously aloof, she took her campaign from the palace to crowded markets and revamped her television advertising, taking a "soft-sell" approach portraying her as a caring motherly figure, Mallarangeng said.

At the same time, he said, Yudhoyono's runaway popularity began to slip as voters took a closer look at a candidate who had surged into the lead only since leaving the cabinet in March.

A crucial question is whether Wiranto and his Golkar Party, the largest in parliament, will lend unified support to either Yudhoyono or Megawati.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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