[The following is a report written exclusively for Joyo Indonesian News by a prominent Indonesia specialist who prefers to remain anonymous.]

Jakarta – With each passing day, Golkar finds itself increasingly on the defensive about how it conducted itself during the election. A persistent flow of protests and allegations pour in from around the archipelago. It is now apparent to everyone that Golkar engaged in widespread cheating. Several areas are already demanding a recount of votes (particularly Jakarta), while the entire province of North Sulawesi decided in a tense meeting over the weekend to hold the entire election again thanks to Golkar's violations. It is unlikely that the entire election will be disqualified and redone, however, because PDI Perjuangan has done too well to be interested in starting again from scratch.

The slow vote count at first caused alarm that Golkar was manipulating the tally. In several areas this alarm has proved justified. But a slightly different conclusion is taking root as only a third of the vote has been tallied after a full week of counting. In past elections, including the one held in 1997 that produced the current government, the ruling Golkar party and the state apparatus it controlled would routinely announce between 50 and 75 percent of the vote count on the very same evening that the polls closed. The time that it actually takes to count the votes across Indonesia when the process is much more fair (and despite the installation of millions of dollars of computer and communications equipment by foreign governments) has cast Golkar's past cheating and manipulations in a particularly harsh light. The scale of the party's past election rigging is vastly more staggering than most had imagined.

This includes the elections that produced the current DPR/MPR and Habibie administration. In short, the current pace of the counting compared with the lightning pace in the past has deepened the view that the Habibie-Golkar government is not just lacking in support and legitimacy (based on performance), but is also simply unconstitutional on the grounds of massive electoral fraud. How can a party that engaged in such a pattern of electoral fraud in the past possibly put itself forward as a credible or even legal candidate to lead the country in the future?

No matter how the coalition politics unfolds, the chances that Golkar will engineer a winning position are now slim to zero. PDI Perjuangan has won a wide plurality of popular support, beating every other contender by a factor of nearly two to one. Not only would it be exceedingly difficult to produce a block of votes large enough to prevent a Megawati government from prevailing in the MPR, but it will be exceedingly risky to attempt it given that PDI-P's supporters across the country are keeping a vigil on the entire process.

Denying victory to Megawati and the PDI-P will surely provoke social unrest. It is worth recalling that her supporters are the most emotionally committed of all groups in the country and her cadres are strongly based in the cities, both on and off Java. That's where the unrest will be organized and felt if Golkar tries foolishly to push the issue of remaining in power. Megawati has shown herself quite capable of controlling her millions of supporters when they're excited and happy. But she herself does not believe she could restrain them if they are cheated of the outcome they now believe deeply they have won even despite Golkar's relentless manipulations. Any outcome that denies the PDI-P victory is playing with fire. By now even ABRI's generals must have figured this out.

Actual coalition politics is unfolding slowly among the major contenders (thanks in part to the absence in the early days of any clear trends in polling results). One obvious problem is that it is taking time for the the notion to take root among top opposition players that political coalitions are not based on personal trust and friendship but rather on mutual political benefit. If everyone were buddy-buddy from the start, there would be no need for coalitions. Genuine political alliances must be formed from interests not from friendships. Thus the suspicions surrounding Amien Rais will have to be dispensed with. Talks to get to that point are already underway. Meantime, Golkar people and others in the PPP are working hard to subvert PAN's and Amien Rais's chances of joining with PDI and PKB by claiming he's meeting covertly with PPP and Golkar. At this point, it would be political suicide for Amien to join with Golkar (even Golkar minus Habibie). His stated policies (easily the most excellent, principled positions taken in the 1999 campaign) are utterly incompatible with a Golkar gambit. In the highly unlikely event that Amien does end up siding with Golkar, people will rightly conclude that he put his personal ambitions ahead of his admirable principled politics. In short, he'll go down in the history books as an opportunist and a hypocrite. The chances he'll make this political blunder are remote (and my conversations with people in his inner circle confirm this).

Meantime, the Habibie administration continues to implode. The Ghalib saga is too rich even for the best fiction writer. Habibie misses every chance handed to him to convince the people he's not just a New Order left-over. Late last week, as the pressures on the attorney general mounted, Habibie could only muster enough nerve to order an audit of Ghalib's accounts. Why the devastating information of account transfers was not enough to conclude that the attorney was not merely a discredited figure but a criminal defies even the most twisted logic. And this is a man who is supposed to be investing Suharto's wealth abroad. The Habibie government has long since stopped being a source of daily entertainment. The level of disgust felt by the average Indonesian is palpable. The prospects for a Golkar government in a climate like this, even without Habibie, are low indeed.

Things to watch for:

1. A strengthening of the PDI-P/PKB/PAN alliance. It will take time, but it appears very much in the cards.
2. The possibility that ABRI will side with the winning coalition instead of with Golkar. The Armed Forces desperately need to repair their own profile. If they hang on until the end with Golkar and the whole cast of criminals and jokers they represent, they risk dragging themselves down even faster than they have already been sinking in the wake of the student and Banyuwangi killings, rapes, kidnappings, mass murders in Aceh and East Timor, and other crimes they have accumulated.
3. An acceleration of the timetable for the MPR meeting. August 17th (Independence Day) is a real possibility.