Heavyweight political parties have long held sway in Indonesia, but the emergence of a new breed of voter more likely to listen to media or even mystics for guidance has robbed them of their former dominance, analysts say.
Despite this shift from the days when parties extended influence into the lowest echelons of society, President Megawati Sukarnoputri has gambled her credibility to win the backing of political titans ahead of September presidential polls.
"Victory will be in our hands," she declared after sealing a deal last Thursday with three parties, including Golkar, the political tool of former dictator Suharto during the three decades before he stood down in 1998.
Her own Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle is now joined by Golkar – which swept to victory in April legislative elections – and the smaller United Development Party and Christian-based Prosperous Peace Party.
Once upon a time in Indonesia such a bloc – representing control over 307 of 550 seats in Indonesia's House of Representatives – could have guaranteed through fair means or foul the placement of its anointed leader as president.
Now, as Indonesia stages its first full democratic presidential elections, voters have broken the party stranglehold to emerge as an unpredictable force which analysts say could entirely negate Megawati's power-building exercise.
One of the driving factors behind this, they say, is the liberation of the Southeast Asian nation's media from the methods by which the Suharto leadership gagged domestic press and restricted foreign reporters.
"Voters are now more informed, partly due to information provided by international and national media and, unlike in the past, they can now carry out new political experiments," political analyst Azyumardi Azra of the state Jakarta Islamic University told AFP.
Scores of unfettered newspapers, television channels and radio stations have sprung up in the years since Suharto, cutting their teeth on some of the world's biggest news stories, culminating in the October 2002 Bali bombings.
According to Azra, many media outlets are prone to editorialising their election coverage, urging readers behind either Megawati or her challenger, Susilio Bambang Yudhoyono.
But says Endi Bayuni, chief editor of the English language Jakarta Post, such is the diversity of Indonesia's press and the new-found sophistication of readers, that voters are capable of making their own choices.
"We are able to publicise stories about parties and candidates and disclose their weaknesses and strengths. This would have never happened if the press was constrained like in the 1990s," Bayuni told AFP.
"On balloting day, they will make a rational decision on who they think should be the president. It is healthy for Indonesia that the media are not trying to influence voters, let the voters decide for themselves," he says.
It is this new found maturity says Dewi Fortuna Anwar of Jakarta's Habibie Centre think tank, which could cost Megawati support as voters express doubts over her reputation as a reformer by trading cabinet seats for the support of the retrogressive Golkar.
"Our voters are a floating mass and they are now more educated. No one party in Indonesia, even Golkar which by far is the most organised party, has a well-established grip in the grassroots," she said.
In what is perhaps a shrewd recognition of this, Yudhoyono has yet to involve his own Democratic Party in a coalition, stressing the need to heed the electorate. "What I say also is, don't fail to listen to the voice of the people," he said after Megawati's inked her four-party pact.
Recent opinion polls also suggest that voters are more likely to base their vote on candidates' policy instead of their politics, a wake-up call for the media shy Megawati.
But, warn observers, even suave Yudhoyono's down-to-earth approach could flounder due to his lack of a mystical manifesto. No matter how excellent or independent the coverage of the media, says political analyst M.T. Arifin, many Indonesian voters still prefer to consult their "dukun" spiritual advisors.
"The belief in advice from 'dukun' – whether false or true – in the grassroots is still quite strong, and this also applies to educated middle-class people. The media must be able to provide more educated and mature information to these people," says Arifin, a lecturer at the Sebelas Maret state university in Central Java.