Singapore – Indonesian opposition leader Amien Rais said here Wednesday that it was too early to declare a winner in the race for the presidency and witheld his support for frontrunner Megawati Sukarnoputri.

"The politicial landscape is very hard to map out. Nobody knows how the political parties will form [coalitions]," he told a forum on the post-election prospects of Southeast Asia's largest country.

Opposition parties together have edged the ruling Golkar out in the June 7 polls but Indonesia's political transition will only be completed when the president is indirectly elected in November.

The president is to be chosen by the 700-member People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) which includes the 462-member parliament elected in the recent polls. This allows for intense horse-trading before the MPR vote.

Opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democracy Party-Struggle (PDI-P) has won about 35 percent of the popular vote in the polls, according to a still ongoing slow tally, with President B. J. Habibie's Golkar trailing at about 19 percent.

"I do not hesitate to congratulate Mrs. Megawati," Rais, whose National Mandate Party (PAN) was in fifth place with 6.9 percent, said in the Singapore forum. "But we must not forget the 65 percent who did not vote for Mega's party," he said. "It is too early to declare the PDI-P the winner."

He also laid down conditions which appeared to distance himself from Megawati. "I will never support any presidential candidate who opposes an act of self-determination for the people of East Timor," he said, referring to Megawati's opposition to a breakaway by the former Portugese colony invaded and annexed by Indonesia in the mid-1970s. "Their right to decide their future is inalienable," Rais said.

He also said "the reason I withold support [for Megawati] is because there are some confusing policies ... there are strong similarities between PDI-P and Golkar."

Rais said former president Suharto, who stepped down in May 1998 amid popular unrest, must face justice. "I will not support a presidential candidate who will not work for national reconciliation," he said.

"The next president must work to achieve just resolution of the Suharto issue. The ex-general must be held accountable for the results of his presidency. This is a matter of social necessity," he said. Rais also said the PDI-P was "reluctant" to reform the 1945 constitution which "fostered two dictatorships."

Megawati, daughter of Indonesia's founding president Sukarno, who was replaced by Suharto in 1966, has largely stayed silent as the election vote count progresses slowly.

She has said that not only Suharto should face the due process of law but many others too. She sticks meticulously to the law, saying she and her family knew what it was like to suffer.

Before the elections Megawati called the 1945 constitution a sacred legacy and said it would not be changed. But her legal advisor and party vice president Dimiati Hartono has since clarified that Megawati was intent on preserving only the preamble of the constitution as it is – namely Pancasila, allowing freedom of worship and a unitary state.

This would leave her open to devolve more powers to the regions and tighten clauses which allow a president to take almost absolute power.