Louise Williams, Jakarta – A jittery Indonesian public prepared to vote in national elections today with 25,000 extra troops securing the capital and rumours circulating of further unrest in the wake of the nation's most violent election campaign in President Soeharto's three decades in power.
On the day before about 124 million Indonesians were to go to the polls, police reported a bomb threat at the Japanese embassy following the arrest overnight on Tuesday of four people suspected of attempting to plant a bomb in a Jakarta shopping mall. Regional military leaders in Indonesia warned voters not to panic as rumours raced through towns and cities, and anonymous leaflets appeared on the streets calling for a boycott of the polls and inciting the public to attack local political leaders.
"Don't worry, just go to your polling booths, we will guard your safety," the official Antara newsagency quoted Jakarta's military spokesman as saying.
The spokesman said the four men arrested overnight on Tuesday had been caught with petrol and stones, and were suspected of attempting to burn down a major Jakarta shopping centre.
More than 120 were burnt to death in a shopping centre fire last Friday in the worst election riot when about 50,000 took to the streets of the Kalimantan town of Banjarmasin, where only 250 troops were deployed.
In East Timor, two Indonesian policemen were killed and four injured when rebels attacked their convoy near Bacau, 100 kilometres east of the capital, Dili, church and hospital sources said yesterday.
In central Jakarta, security forces yesterday dispersed about 75 students seeking an audience with the Attorney-General to protest against the exclusion of the ousted pro-democracy leader, Ms Megawati Sukarnoputri, the popular daughter of Indonesia's founding President Sukarno, from the tightly controlled elections.
The Soeharto Government said a so-called "rainbow alliance" of opposition forces was trying to derail today's polling and listed a range of anti-Government groups as being involved - from friends of Amnesty International and the unemployed, to communists.
However, the Islamic opposition United Development Party (PPP) claimed "agents provocateurs" had incited the pre-election rioting in an attempt to discredit the party before voting, and said incentives and threats were being employed to boost votes for "a certain party", clearly referring to the ruling Golkar Party of President Soeharto.
Election officials announced that the two legal opposition parties would be denied access to the computerised election results database, fuelling speculation that the final results may be manipulated.
The PPP yesterday issued a detailed list of election violations, including threats that villagers would disappear from their homes or be forced into work gangs if Golkar lost the election in their area, and claims that Government employees in Jakarta had been given two voting cards each. The report documented threats made to villagers by local Government officials and military officers, who told them they would have to report daily to the authorities if Golkar did not win.
The threats were made in the northern Sumatran province of Aceh, an Islamic stronghold sympathetic to the PPP, where locals have fought a sporadic struggle against Jakarta for independence, claiming they received no benefits from the area's substantial natural gas reserves.
In Java, the PPP claimed Government officials had threatened villagers with kidnappings and problems in future dealings with the bureaucracy if Golkar lost.
Government employees and their families, and the relatives of military officers are obliged to vote for Golkar in the national elections.
Only three parties are permitted to contest national elections: Golkar, the PPP and the PDI, which was weakened last year when Ms Megawati was ousted from the party leadership.