Yudhoyono takes early lead in Indonesia's presidential election

Producer: Yvonne Gomez
First broadcast: 20 September 04, Radio Singapore International

Counting to determine who Indonesia's next president will be has begun. Over a hundred and fifty million eligible voters went to the polls across the the archipelago to cast their votes in the country's first ever direct presidential election.

Incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri and her running mate Hashim Muzadi are battling it out against former security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his running mate, Yusuf Kalla.

Preliminary results show Yudhoyono taking the lead.

Yvonne Gomez spoke to RSI's Bharati Jagdish, who was at the polling centres in Jakarta this morning.

BJ: Well, voting in Jakarta went on very peacefully. There was ample security at the polling centres - two civilian guards and a police officer were stationed a each polling booth. Independent observers were also present to ensure that there was no voter intimidation or voting fraud. Voters were coming in quite slowly, though, this morning. I was speaking to some people earlier who said that the excitement has diminished a little, because they have already been through two rounds of elections before this one - the legislative elections in April, and the first round of presidential elections in July. But this presidential election is crucial. It is the decisive round, and a loss for Ms Megawati could be damaging, because not only will she lose the presidency, but possibly her post as the head of her PDI-P party as well.

I understand preliminary results are in, but how seriously should we take them?

BJ: Well, analysts say we should take them quite seriously. In the last round, trends that emerged in the first few hours and days, actually stayed on throughout the counting period, and actually were reflected in the final results. Analysts say that the place to watch is East Java, where support for Megawati and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is almost equal. Ms Megawati has been campaigning on her track record so far, saying that under her administration, the economy has stabilised and there is less unrest in the country. Mr Susilo has been presenting a platform of change, and has vowed to fix the problems which he claims, his opponent hasn't managed to fix - problems like unemployment in a country where about 40-50 million people are currently jobless, poverty, corruption and even security issues. But the consensus is that whomever becomes president, will have quite a task ahead of him or her, in terms of instituting reforms in all these sectors.

And how soon can we expect final results to emerge?

BJ: Well, counting is proceeding rather rapidly. Results from all over the archipelago will be electronically transmitted to the national counting centre, located at the Borobudur Hotel in central Jakarta. These will be coming in fast and furious, but the authorities are pretty cautious and they're saying that it'll most likely take two weeks or so, to get the final results in.