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JAKARTA: Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono looked Thursday to have been handed a huge mandate to fight corruption and poverty in the world's third-largest democracy after an apparent landslide election win.
Unofficial results gave the incumbent ex-general a massive lead over opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri and outgoing Vice-President Jusuf Kalla following Wednesday's vote, despite Megawati's complaints of irregularities.
In only the second direct presidential election in the Southeast Asian powerhouse since the collapse of the Suharto government in 1998, Yudhoyono confirmed his status as the most popular leader of the new democratic era.
The peaceful vote also reinforced Indonesia's position at the vanguard of democracy in a region traumatised recently by political turmoil and oppression.
The General Election Commission website said its "raw data" gave Yudhoyono a massive 61.66 per cent of the vote, enough to avoid a second-round run-off in September.
Based on 18.72 million votes counted out of more than 170 million eligible voters, Megawati was second with 28.57 per cent and Kalla was a distant third with 9.77 per cent, it said.
The figures, which the commission described as "preliminary" and "not official", matched six independent polling agencies' estimates putting Yudhoyono at about 60 per cent and Megawati at around 27 per cent.
Yudhoyono, a taciturn doctor of agricultural science who is fond of writing love songs in his spare time, thanked his supporters for his "success" but stopped short of claiming victory, saying he must wait for the final results.
"The vote count hasn't finished yet... but the poll surveys in their quick counts show the success of my comrades," he said at his residence south of Jakarta after polling closed across the massive archipelago on Wednesday.
Kalla congratulated his former running mate and boss for the past five years, but Megawati described the election as an exercise in "pseudo-democracy" and repeated complaints about alleged "fraud".
"Real democracy means, first, there are no indications of fraud," the 62-year-old daughter of independence hero Sukarno said late Wednesday.
"In my opinion, this is a pseudo-democracy."
Her running mate, notorious former special forces commander Prabowo Subianto, said he was preparing a legal challenge and cited an "independent" count which put Megawati in the lead.
Megawati, who was ousted from the presidency by Yudhoyono in 2004, made similar complaints about April's general elections and ahead of Wednesday's vote, leading to changes in voting procedures which she approved.
National newspapers paid her complaints little heed, hailing the vote as a "landslide" victory for Yudhoyono and a great step forward for Indonesia's maturing democracy.
"For anyone in the world who doubts that poorly-educated and economically poor people -- most of them being Muslims -- could embrace democracy, the Indonesian people proved Wednesday that such a cynical view is totally wrong," The Jakarta Post said in an editorial on Thursday.
"For three consecutive elections since the nation ousted Suharto in 1998, Indonesians have shown that they are as sophisticated and as civilized as any other mature democracy in the world."
Yudhoyono has promised to boost economic growth, create jobs and end a culture of pervasive corruption in the mainly Muslim country of 234 million people spanning 17,000 islands.
Under his watch the economy has weathered the global financial crisis and is expected to post four per cent growth this year, third only to China and India out of the G20 group of rich and developing countries.
But his signature policy is good governance and an anti-corruption drive which has netted several senior officials.
Speaking to reporters late Wednesday, he said he would "intensify" programmes to help the poor in a country with about 30 million people living below the poverty line.
- AFP/yt
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