Louise Williams, Jakarta – Indonesia's deposed democracy leader, Ms Megawati Sukarnoputri, announced yesterday she would boycott next week's national elections.
Her announcement came as the armed forces deployed 20,000 additional troops to secure the capital against further campaign violence.
Ms Megawati told hundreds of cheering supporters she would "not exercise her political right to vote" in the May 29 parliamentary elections.
She was unable to call on her supporters to follow her example without breaking Indonesia's strict political laws.
Throughout the campaign she has been careful to avoid any illegal actions which would justify her arrest.
However, she specifically instructed her supporters not to vote for the Indonesian Democratic Party or PDI, the party she once led before being ousted in a Government-engineered internal party coup last year.
And she issued a veiled threat to the Soeharto Government, quoting her late father, Indonesia's founding president Sukarno: "We love peace, but we love freedom more."
Ms Megawati said she had retained significant support and was working to hold her backers together in an unofficial faction of the PDI for a future challenge to the Soeharto Government.
Her disenfranchised supporters appear to be free to vote with the remaining opposition block, the Muslim-oriented United Development Party (PPP). The PPP has attracted hundreds of thousands of supporters in election rallies, including scores waving Megawati posters. One branch of the PPP has already formed an informal alliance with Ms Megawati's supporters in the central Javanese town of Solo, to maximise the anti-Government vote.
This alliance is significant as Solo is the home town of Ms Ibu Tien, a former wife of President Soeharto, and has been considered a support base for the Soeharto regime. The Jakarta military commander, Major General Sutiyoso, warned that security forces would crack down on any political groups attempting to go out on the streets after the official campaign period, which ends today.
All street rallies have been banned following the worst campaign violence in 30 years, but many political analysts fear frustrated PPP supporters may defy the military and hold a rally today.
Major General Sutiyoso said about 20,000 additional troops would be stationed across the capital and outlying suburbs to maintain law and order during the so-called five-day "cooling off" period.
A police spokesman said 100 people and 25 members of the security forces had been injured on Tuesday night when "brutality and violence had gone beyond a tolerable level".
The official death toll for the four-week-long election campaign has reached 80, including a young bystander who died in central Jakarta after being hit by a bullet when police fired warning shots at a rioting opposition group.
Police said they had fired into the air during that clash, but admitted injuring at least four people in the remote province of Irian Jaya when warning shots were used to break up a crowd.