Gary LaMoshi, Denpasar – The Indonesian general election campaign started with a bang last week, but it will end with a whimper. Never have 24 parties given people so little reason to celebrate.

Campaigning for the April 5 legislative elections officially began on Thursday. That vote sets the stage and the pecking order for the country's first-ever direct presidential election in July, with a runoff in September if no candidate receives a majority in Round 1.

In Jakarta and many provincial capitals, the campaign kicked off with all-party parades. In 1999, these displays of political pluralism after decades of guided democracy and worse under presidents Sukarno and Suharto drew crowds of well-wishers lining the streets. This time, the parades drew yawns and jeers from onlookers, as well as complaints about ensuing traffic jams.

Takin' it from the streets

The elites, not the streets, generated Thursday's electoral excitement. President Megawati Sukarnoputri's Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono resigned from his leading spot in the cabinet. His resignation was the first from Megawati's Gotong Royong (a traditional term for "working together") cabinet, a rainbow coalition stretching from Islamic hardliners to democratic reformers. The group features several presidential candidates, including Susilo, marked as Megawati's most potent opponent in many polls.

Megawati's allies have complained it's improper for cabinet members to run against the president they serve. In a country where the Speaker of the House and the central bank governor each remained in office after corruption convictions – eventually overturned by compliant courts – the idea of propriety is still developing. Until Susilo bowed out, no minister had moved toward the exit ramp.

Susilo's resignation culminated a week and a half of charges, countercharges and name-calling. The former three-star general claimed he'd been sidelined in the cabinet. In response, Megawati's husband Taufik Kiemas, a legislator and power broker in her ruling PDI-P party, called Susilo "childish". The row ostensibly revolved around drafting regulations for cabinet members during the campaign, but it ignited only after Susilo hit the airwaves in a public-service announcement explaining voting procedures, apparently produced and broadcast without presidential approval.

'Do you want to embarrass me?'

Now campaigning unencumbered for his tiny Democratic Party, Susilo came to Bali, a PDI-P stronghold in 1999, on Sunday and talked about promoting small businesses to create jobs for all Indonesians and letting Bali keep more of the revenues from the controversial policy of selling entry visas.

Even that bit of "chicken in every pot" fluff contrasts with Megawati's speech here on Friday. She chided supporters about predictions that PDI-P support has slipped since 1999, when the party won seven of Bali's nine legislative seats. "Do you want to embarrass me?" the president asked before breaking into a song, apparently a requirement for every candidate at rallies.

On the October 12, 2002, terrorist bombing after Megawati's team derided foreign intelligence warnings and still stifles tourism in Bali and throughout Indonesia? Or that new visa policy that gives tourists another reason to visit Malaysia or Thailand instead? Nary a word nor note.

Susilo's standing in the polls also makes him popular with larger parties as a potential running mate, or even a headliner. His first stop after quitting was a meeting with ousted president Abdurrahman Wahid, aka Gus Dur, who fired Susilo from his cabinet just before his own fall when Susilo opposed Wahid's scheme to use the armed forces to avert impeachment; apparently they've patched things up. Wahid's National Awakening Party (PKB by its Indonesian abbreviation) is expected to nominate Gus Dur again, but his history of strokes and virtual blindness give him the option of ceding to Susilo for health reasons without losing face.

Jakarta's foreign intelligentsia likewise gives Susilo high marks, perhaps because he's the only ex-general in the race without human-rights black marks on his record. Despite nearly five years in the cabinet, though, it's difficult to identify any initiative as Susilo's. When I mentioned Susilo to an Indonesian voter, she enthused, "I like him," but couldn't name any of his policies or programs. That's frighteningly similar to the rise and fall of US presidential hopeful General Wesley Clark, who engendered initial enthusiasm but seems to have left about 12 of his allotted 15 minutes of fame unused.

Sounds of silence

That's not to pick on Susilo; hardly any candidate or party offers a coherent program. After a few stumbles toward reform under Gus Dur, Megawati's regime has largely embraced the military, the economic elite and the corrupt system that flourished under Suharto. Legislators across the board routinely fail to act on 90 percent of the bills before them; what better method for silently endorsing the status quo and killing reform? Political office is still seen as a license for personal enrichment, not a mandate for public service.

This in a nation with an estimated unemployment rate of 40 percent, where economic policymakers opted for macroeconomic gains and withdrawal from subsidized international borrowing at the expense of investment, faster growth and poverty eradication; martial law in one province to combat armed secessionists and policies that provoked separatist violence at the other end of the archipelago; corruption on a massive scale pervasive throughout the business and legal systems as well as politics; an army that continues to operate beyond civilian control; severe shortages of affordable health care and education that could cut the poverty cycle; and denial still the main response to terrorism by Islamic militants and other groups.

In reaction to their growing isolation from the political elite, people largely view the campaign as an excuse to ride around town waving party flags and get uang muka (face money) for showing up at rallies that usually feature popular singers as well as boring party speakers. Displaying a level of cynicism that qualifies him for a senior political post, one enterprising Jakartan received Rp 40,000 (US$4.62) plus a food voucher and T-shirt for attending a PDI-P rally, then told the Jakarta Post, "Actually, I am not going to vote for PDI-P. I just want its money, that's all. I am willing to accept money from other parties, too, to help in their campaigns."

Indonesia desperately needs to engage its citizenship in a conversation about the nation it wants to build, before the rotten system collapses. But this election is not a competition of ideas or policies or even an opportunity to engage the populace. It's simply a contest for power among parties where no side wants to take a chance of being shut out. Megawati's PDI-P is considering an election coalition with the No 2 party Golkar, Suharto's ruling vehicle, chaired by convicted-but-reprieved swindler Akbar Tanjung.

That spectacle shouldn't just make the advocates of reformasi vomit and martyrs to that cause rise from their graves for revenge. That, not any loss of support in Bali, is what should shame Megawati and the 23 rival parties that offer Indonesia so little to celebrate.