Patrick Walters, Jakarta – Abdurrahman Wahid, the leader of Indonesia's biggest Muslim organisation, predicted yesterday that Megawati Sukarnoputri would face an uphill battle to be Indonesia's next president.
As the major political parties begin weeks of hard bargaining over Indonesia's next government, Mr Wahid – himself a candidate for the presidency – said Ms Megawati faced significant opposition from Muslim groups, including members of his own National Awakening Party (PKB).
In vote counting yesterday, the official tally and unofficial counting continued to give Ms Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI-P) a strong lead over the ruling Golkar party.
Figures supplied by the Antara news agency showed, with almost 65 per cent of the vote counted, PDI-P had polled 25.3 million votes (33.5 per cent of the national vote) compared with 16.2 million votes for Golkar (21.5 per cent) and 10.9 million votes for PKB (14.5 per cent).
"If you don't elect Megawati you will have riots. If you do elect Megawati you face the same problem," Mr Wahid told The Australian.
He said Ms Megawati's candidacy would be opposed by some Muslim groups, who were firmly opposed to a woman becoming president. Also, her leadership credentials were untested.
There were problems with alternative candidates, including incumbent President B.J. Habibie, Amien Rais and armed forces commander General Wiranto, he said.
"If nobody else is acceptable then I will consider it. Habibie has no political astuteness. He thinks that people can be bought. The armed forces also have problems."
According to Mr Wahid, another frequently mentioned candidate – the Sultan of Yogyakarta – was "too limited and too parochial".
Senior National Mandate Party (PAN) officials yesterday said party leader Amien Rais had ruled out any coalition with either Golkar of PDI-P.
The election result was a major disappointment for Dr Rais, with PAN winning only about 7 per cent of the national vote, giving it about 45-50 seats in the 500-seat parliament.
Golkar officials yesterday predicted PDI-P would win 180 seats compared with between 102 and 109 for Golkar. It predicted its final share of the total votes would climb to about 25 to 29 per cent compared with about 32 or 33 per cent for PDI-P.
Golkar would continue to explore the possibility of building a multi-party coalition, with officials saying approaches would also be made to Ms Megawati.
Golkar sources also confirmed yesterday the party's central board would seek to reopen the question of Dr Habibie's presidential nomination.