Andreas Harsono, Jakarta – A retired army general, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is likely to be President Megawati Sukarnoputri's most serious challenger in Indonesia's presidential election in July, judging by an opinion poll and the views of political analysts.
Meanwhile, as of Friday afternoon, with more than 89 million out of a possible 147 million votes counted electronically, the Golkar Party founded by former dictator Suharto appeared poised to win the April 5 parliamentary elections.
Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI-P) had 17.5 million votes, trailing Golkar by more than a million votes.
The presidential race is heating up such that a poll released on Wednesday indicated that 84 percent of Indonesians want a new president after the July 5 vote, which will be the country's first direct presidential election.
The poll says that Yudhoyono, also a former member of Megawati's cabinet, is the popular favorite with about 28 percent of the vote in the poll.
Megawati, who is seeking another term as president, got 14 percent support in the opinion poll. Akbar Tanjung, chairman of the Golkar Party, who is also eyeing the presidency, was not even among the top five.
The survey, by the London-based group Taylor Nelson, was conducted among 1,016 voters across Indonesia between March 26 and April 1 and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
"It's difficult now to stop Yudhoyono. He is going to be the next president if nothing unusual happens between now and July," said Indonesian activist Liem Sioe Liong of the London-based Tapol human-rights group.
Many Indonesians are looking for a leader who is seen to be clean and at the same time strong. They also want stability and economic growth that has not quite come back since the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
A common public perception is that Yudhoyono is honest, and his military credentials also create a view among some that he will bring discipline into his administration.
Megawati, daughter of Indonesia's founding father Sukarno, is often seen as a weak leader. She has been credited with bringing political and economic stability to Indonesia since she came to power in 2001 after Abdurrahman Wahid. But critics say she is too aloof and has done little to crack down on graft or improve living standards for the country's poor.
At the same time, Yudhoyono "is a general but he is more a civilian than a hawkish general", Indonesian political observer Bill Liddle of Ohio State University told Radio 68H here.
In the wake of the vote count so far in the parliamentary poll, the Megawati camp is now working to control the damage by moving to reorganize her campaign strategy ahead of the July poll.
In terms of percentage as of Friday, PDI-P secured 19.67 percent of the tally while Golkar led with 21 percent of votes. In the 1999 election, the PDI-P won 33.7 percent of the vote to win the top spot, with Golkar coming second with 22.5 percent.
The workers of the Golkar Party, established by Indonesia's authoritarian president Suharto in the late 1960s, are jubilant. "We are already No 1. We are the winners of this election and we will fight for the presidency," Tanjung said Wednesday.
Under Indonesia's revised electoral system, Golkar's lead does not mean that its presidential candidate – to be decided at a convention on Monday – has an edge. In the Suharto days, members of parliament would vote for the president, but this time, more than 100 million voters will directly cast ballots for president.
But Golkar's bigger numbers in parliament would give it the privilege to have a candidate in the running for the presidency. Election rules provide that only parties that get more than 5 percent of votes can nominate presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
Tanjung himself does not automatically become his party's presidential nominee. Critics say his public image was badly damaged because of his involvement in a corruption case, although the Supreme Court acquitted him.
Megawati has also been busy making a last-minute effort to prepare for the presidential race, setting up the "Mega Center" where her closest advisers are supposed to draw up a new campaign strategy and to pick a running mate.
This is the same strategy used by her rivals, who include Amien Rais, parliamentary Speaker, as well as Yudhoyono. Both have asked a number of intellectuals and party thinkers to spearhead their campaign strategy through a think-tank.
But heated arguments marked the weekly meeting of Megawati's party on Tuesday, where everyone blamed everyone else, news reports said. In the end, they could not even agree on the establishment of the Mega Center.
Kwik Kian Gie, a longtime adviser to Megawati and a cabinet member, left before the meeting was over. In an agitated tone, he told the media that he doubted whether the new team could help to restore the public confidence in his party.
"I know nothing about the Mega Center, I'm not part of it. But how can you [persuade] Indonesian people to vote for one figure in such a short time?" he asked.
Presidential and vice-presidential candidates need not come from the same political party, which is why Indonesian politicians are busy horse-trading to assemble winning combinations.
Yudhoyono's upstart Democrat Party had secured 6.6 million votes or 7.5 percent of votes as of Friday. While this gives his party room to nominate him for the presidential race, he would need to build an alliance with one or more other political parties to secure his bid for the country's highest post.
Yudhoyono has not said who his running mate would be, but speculation is rife here that he would ask businessman Jusuf Kalla to be his vice-presidential candidate. The logic is that Yudhoyono is Javanese, a member of the largest ethnic group in Indonesia, and he needs a non-Javanese running mate to gain votes from the outer islands. Kalla is a Bugis businessman from South Sulawesi province.
Kalla is a Golkar Party presidential nominee, although he is not seen to be a strong contender to Akbar Tanjung.
Tanjung's closest rival for the Golkar presidential nomination is Wiranto, another retired army general, who has been indicted on human-rights abuses in East Timor, especially after its 1999 independence vote.
If the results of surveys are borne out in the coming months, no single candidate would win more than 50 percent of votes in the July election to become Indonesia's first directly elected president. This would force a September run-off election between the two candidates who get the most number of votes on July 5.