Two big pictures of Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri and her new running mate Hasyim Muzadi fell to the ground as she approached the podium last week to announce their partnership.
Omen or not, analysts say Muzadi is unlikely to be of much help to the embattled Megawati in Indonesia's first direct presidential election on July 5.
She is struggling to regain support from millions of disaffected voters who turned away from her party in the April 5 legislative elections. But opinion polls show Megawati far behind her former security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as preferred president.
Megawati has abandoned her current vice-president, Hamzah Haz, to team up with Muzadi who leads the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). It is Indonesia's largest Muslim social organization and claims 40 million followers.
The move is the latest bad decision Megawati has made since parliament elected her president in July 2001, said Mohammad Qodari, research director of the Indonesian Survey Institute.
Asked what Megawati could do to retain the presidency, he laughed and said: "If she could turn back the clock ... and change her policies." Her fate is partly in the hands of her presidential predecessor, the eccentric and nearly-blind Abdurrahman Wahid, whose grandfather founded NU.
Megawati, a daughter of Indonesia's charismatic first president Sukarno, hopes Muzadi will bring millions of Islamic votes with him to supplement her own party's secular-nationalist appeal.
Political observers say that is unlikely to happen. "I think if she chooses Hasyim Muzadi she has a very slim chance," said Azyumardi Azra, rector of the State Islamic University in Jakarta.
"Hamzah Haz probably would have helped her more than Hasyim Muzadi," Azra said. Teamed with Haz, at least she could get "solid support" from his Muslim-based United Development Party which finished fourth in the general election, Azra said.
He said the major factor working against Muzadi is that Wahid – known as Gus Dur – does not support his candidacy.
NU followers "will listen more to Gus Dur than to Hasyim Muzadi," he said. "I think the NU members will split into a number of camps." Arbi Sanit, a University of Indonesia political scientist, said Wahid was in a strategic position. "Whoever wants to win can't free themselves of Gus Dur," he said. Wahid's National Awakening Party finished third with 10.57 percent of the vote.
His younger brother, Solahuddin Wahid, an NU vice-chairman, has been talking with the Golkar Party's presidential candidate Wiranto about becoming his vice-presidential hopeful.
Golkar, the party founded by former president Suharto, topped the polls with 21.58 percent of the vote and 128 seats in the new 550-member parliament.
It pushed Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle into second place with 18.53 percent and 109 seats.
Voters tired of continuing widespread corruption and a still-struggling economy punished Megawati for failing to accomplish the hoped-for reforms when PDI-P swept to power with 34 percent of the vote in 1999.
Sanit and Qodari said voting in the first round of the presidential election could mirror the outcome in the legislative ballot, meaning no candidate would get the required 50 percent plus one of the national vote. A second round requires only a simple majority for victory.
Megawati could still retain her seat if she reached out to smaller parties with promises of cabinet positions and if she could make peace with Gus Dur, Sanit said. The two leaders have had strained relations in the past.
It may, however, all be too late. "More than 70 percent don't want her to come back for a second term," said Qodari, who has researched the public mood.