How will Indonesian voters make their decisions in the second round of the presidential election?

Producer: Bharati Jagdish
First broadcast: 14 July 04, Radio Singapore International

It's almost certain that Indonesians will have to go to the polls again on September 20 in a runoff election to decide on a President.

At the moment, it seems incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri and former general, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will be squaring off against each other.

Both candidates are now trying to form pre-election coalitions in order to garner maximum support in September.

Analysts say that if either one of them could get the backing of, for example, the largest party in parliament, Golkar, he or she could end up winning as the party's support base of voters would then be persuaded to vote for him or her.

However, this strategy did not seem to work in the first round of elections.

For example, only about 30 percent of people who voted for Golkar in the legislative election, voted for Golkar's presidential candidate, Wiranto.

So are party loyalties or even religious affiliations going to figure in voters' decisions?

A question Bharati Jagdish (BJ) put to Maxwell Lane (ML), Research Fellow at the Asia Research Centre at the Murdoch University in Australia.

ML: "It's always been assumed, based on the experience in the 1950s, that Indonesian that Indonesian voters usually vote along religio-cultural or socio-cultural lines. It's called aliran or "stream" politics. But what the first round presidential election results have shown is that this still does apply, but it applies less and less and less as time goes on. What's replacing it is a very ad-hoc kind of bunching of criteria ranging from, whether the presidential candidate's physical appearance seem convincing to influences of some local leaders. The whole pattern of the election is that people no longer vote en-bloc according to what the political parties they support say. If for example, Wiranto goes on TV and says, "I'm supporting Yudhoyono.", it doesn't necessarily mean that Wiranto's supporters of Golkar's supporters will vote for Yudhoyono. What alliances will emerge, I'm not sure. Maybe the alliances will not be on a political party basis, but rather based more on individual figures, but not necessarily figures who were past presidential candidates. Perhaps, other figures who are influential at the local level or who represent an issue. What is clear is that however the voters are making up their minds at the moment, they're making up their own mind themselves. They're not making a decision because their votes have been bought, or because they have been coerced and not because they have some blind loyalty to a political machine."

BJ: Yudhoyono's party only has 52 seats in parliament and if he does ultimately become President, what kind of dynamic will he have to grapple with considering that he will have to, to some extent, depend a lot on the larger parties in order to pass legislation and for cabinet positions as well?

ML: "In the Indonesian parliament it is very well known that most of the current party candidates had to invest a lot of money one way or the other in getting their positions on the party lists, so they are going to want their money back. It's quite likely that there will be an auction-like in the new parliament in terms of Yudhoyono wanting to get support. Whether he'll refuse to go down that path and try some other tactics is yet to be seen."

BJ: What does he have to do between now and September in order to maintain his popularity and actually get past the 50 percent mark?

ML "That's a good question. I think what the public mood is demanding is an answer to some of the socio-economic problems. When you see him on TV, he is asked about them and he gives some answers, but the answers are always so abstract, general and non-concrete. If he remains at that level, it's quite possible that he'll not pick up any momentum. If both candidates respond in the same way, then I think the number of voters boycotting the election will actually increase and that of course, will reduce the legitimacy of the next president of Indonesia. Even if Megawati decided to come up with some at least realistically-sounding responses to policies, she could catch up."

BJ: Now, some analysts say that Megawati's party, PDI-P, may not survive in terms of party leadership if she loses the election. What's your perspective on this?

ML: "I think, certainly, the PDI-P will lose an enormous amount of momentum and it's guaranteed they have a hundred-plus seats in parliament for the next five years and this is replicated in many of the provincial parliaments. So they will have a lot of governors in the provinces. It will survive in that regard. But who will lead it, what will it stand for? I think these are questions which will not be easily answered and will probably result in internal chaos."

BJ: A democratic vote, a lot of the time, is based on popularity and decisions could be based on a lot of things, for example, how charismatic the leader is. But who would you say, objectively speaking and not taking into account how the voters will vote, is the more capable of the two in terms of being able to turn the economy around and change things in the political landscape as well?

ML: "Indonesia is a country of 220 million people. It needs heavy industry, it needs medium industry, it needs steel, iron, engineering and it needs all the technological skills and transfer of technology to build all that. Suharto never gave any attention to this type of foundation although growth was high during his rule. He just gave attention to policies which produced quick results, so now you have an economy with no real foundation or base to it in an era where foreign direct investment around the world is no longer going to developing countries on any real scale. My opinion is that the only way the Indonesian economy can recover is through some very efficient and massive mobilization of the country's domestic productive resources and none of the candidates has this sort of perspective. All the candidates, Megawati and Yudhoyono have a perspective, but it's as such: somehow, almost like a magic wand, bringing back foreign investments on a large scale would drive the economic recovery of a country of over 200 million, heading towards 300 million people in the next 50 years. I don't think that's a realistic scenario for economic recovery in Indonesia."