A total of six generals have nominated for the Governor's race in East Java. Three are former regional commanders: incumbent Governor Imam Utomo, Haris Sudarno and Joko Subroto.

The other three are Mohammad Dayat and Deddy Sudarmaji, both former East Java police chiefs, and former vice governor of Jakarta and retired officer Abdul Kahfie.

Iman Utomo and Haris Sudarno are seen as frontrunners in the race, in which a total of 43 candidates have fielded. The pair has solid backing in the East Java Regional Legislative Council (DPRD).

The two largest parties in the DPRD, the National Awakening Party (PKB), with its backing from the region's traditionalist Muslim communities, and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), have both nominated retired generals.

PDI-P with 31 seats and the second largest party in the Legislative Council is backing incumbent Governor Imam Utomo for a second term. Utomo is also said to have the backing PDIP's chairwoman, President Megawati Sukarnoputri.

PKB, with 32, has not one but three generals on its list, along with two young Nahdlatul Ulama politicians. PKB's three generals are former East Java Regional Military Commander Haris Sudarno, his colleague Joko Subroto and former Jakarta vice governor Abdul Kahfi.

The continuing power of former President Abdurrahman Wahid is such that the final word on PKB's official candidate will be strongly influenced by who he decides to back, but up to now, Wahid has not signalled any candidate.

PKB is saying that if Megawati gets her way and keeps Utomo in his job, they should have their man in the deputy's post.

The picture has been complicated by the emergence of PKB secretary general and Wahid nephew Syaifullah Yusuf and East Java NU Regional Executive Board (DPWNU) chairman Ali Maschan Moesa.

NU sources close told Laksamana.Net that they expect Wahid to back a combination of retired general Sudarno and NU politician Ali Maschan as the "best of the worst" of the candidates. PDI-P remains optimistic Utomo will get the vote in a coalition with smaller parties.

Supomo SW, Deputy Speaker of DPRD from the PDI-P faction, says the party is capable of amassing another 15 votes. "We are confident of the coalition we are building, even if the military/police faction abstains," he told reporters on 7 May.

That may be an optimistic reading. PDI-P has suffered a series of defeats in the regions, most recently in the vote for Governor and Vice Governor of West Java. There, Danny Setiawan became the region's first civilian goveror through a coalition of Golkar and the Muslim-based United Development Party (PPP).

PDI-P had nominated former West Java Regional Military Commander Tayo Tarmadi, whose hopes of taking the position were crushed when the police faction abstained.

Analysts note that the failure of a general in West Java – and the chance of failure in East Java – may reflect the belief that there is no guarantee that the nomination of retired generals is automatically supported by armed forces headquarters in Jakarta.

In East Java, PKB and PDI-P dominated the 1999 elections, and the two will logically play the leading roles. If they were to agree to support any one of the candidates, the race would be a walk-over.

Haris Sudarno has established a good record in the eyes of both PKB or PDIP, compared to the other generals.

The position of East Java Governor has been a sensitive post in the past. Amid a wave of oppression of activists by the Suharto regime and efforts to overthrow Megawati as leader of the then-PDI from 1993 on, Governor Basofi Sudirman made his position clear.

Sudirman blatantly backed a government-sponsored candidate for the PDI leadership in the province. The late Latif Pujosakti's attempt to overthrow Megawati's ally Sutjipto as chairman of the PDIP's East Java central executive board failed in the end, and Sutjipto is now PDI-P's secretary general.

While his motives for doing so are not entirely clear, former military commander Sudarno is seen as being accommodative to Megawati's position.

Shooting, killings

Despite emerging as the strongest candidate, Sudarno may have trouble living down the events at Nipah Dam on 25 September 1993, when a combined force of local army and police opened fire on hundreds of villagers protesting the construction of the dam.

Four people were killed at three wounded in the incident in the Banyuates sub-district of Sampang, on the island of Madura.

The shootings were immediately investigated by several different non-government organizations including the respected Legal Aid Institute of Indonesia (YLBHI).

Four local military officers, either themselves directly involved or having command responsibility, were transferred out of the district within a month of the shootings.

Their transfers are believed to have been not on the results of any investigation but on instructions from then Armed Forces Commander, Gen. Faisal Tanjung.

He and Sudarno, then the East Java commander, are said to have decided to sack a few officers as a way of dealing with the public pressure over the killings.

Joko Subroto was regional commander when the so-called Banyuwangi killings took place. In this bizarre episode, ninja, men clad in black, murdered a series of people in a wave of killings than reached as far as West Java. Initially, many of the victims were alleged to be practitioners of witchcraft.

The ninja were said to be able to jump over houses but one captured in Malang appeared completely insane.

While the first victims were often alleged to be black magic practitioners, many Muslim clerics were slain, along with religious school teachers and leaders of schools of Koranic studies in a wave of murders that terrified Java and produced a final death toll of 95.

Analysts said that, given the fact that the majority of murders took place in strong NU areas, the wave could have been a military operation designed to weaken the spirit of the organization's grassroots supporters. Such terror campaigns against elements of the population were commonplace under Suharto.

After the wave of killings subsided, religious teachers and prominent figures in society openly criticized the government and the military authorities for taking little effort to stem the murders.

The mastermind behind the killings has still not been revealed. Former Defense Minister and Armed Forces Commander Wiranto admitted at the time that the killings were the result of a struggle of interests among the political elite. He did not provide any more clues to the identity of the mastermind of the murders.