Jakarta – Campaigning starts Tuesday for a July 5 election in which Indonesian voters will for the first time choose their president directly. Five candidates are running, but analysts doubt the outcome will usher in sweeping reforms for the problem-ridden Southeast Asian nation.

All five are from the country's political, military and religious establishments and have occupied top government positions in past administrations, including the 32-year regime of former dictator Soeharto that ended with his ouster in 1998.

Previously, the head of state was chosen by lawmakers acting as an electoral college.

If, as widely expected, no candidate wins an outright majority at the July ballot – Indonesians would choose between the two front-runners in a second round of voting in September.

Analysts predict that whatever the result, the Southeast nation will continue its gradual transition to democracy without major reforms that could upset the entrenched power of the elite.

Personality rather than policy is expected to be a major feature of the campaign. "No candidate has offered anything like a coherent political or economic program of reform," said Jeffrey Winters, a professor and Indonesia specialist from Chicago's Northwestern University.

Incumbent President Megawati Soekarnoputri's star has dimmed since parliamentary elections in April in which her political party lost nearly 40 percent of the votes it had won in 1999, a year after Soeharto was ousted amid massive pro-democracy protests.

Megawati owed that victory to the votes of the poor who supported her as an icon of the reform movement because of her struggle against the dictatorship and her legacy as the daughter of Indonesia's founder, Sukarno.

Nowadays, she is widely perceived to have done little to improve living standards or to eradicate endemic corruption left over from Soeharto's era.

Opinion polls show her running about 20 points behind Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a retired four-star general who served as Megawati's top security minister for the past three years.

Susilo, who teamed up on the ticket with the popular welfare minister Yusuf Kalla, is seen as a straight talker not tainted by corruption.

Susilo is also viewed as the candidate most likely to stand up to Indonesia's hardline generals in bringing the traditionally independent-minded army brass under effective civilian control.

Political analysts expect that Susilo would move quickly to end the current separatist war in the northern province of Aceh, and to settle lingering religious conflicts in the Maluku archipelago and Sulawesi island.

The remaining candidates – Gen. Wiranto, Megawati's Vice President Hamzah Haz and Amien Rais, speaker of the country's highest legislative assembly – are all polling further behind Yudhoyono and Megawati.

Wiranto – Indonesia's former military supremo – has been indicted by a UN-backed special tribunal in East Timor for war crimes allegedly committed during that territory's successful secession from Indonesia in 1999. At the time, troops under his command went on a rampage that killed 1,500 people and destroyed much of the province's infrastructure.

Although he trails both Susilo and Megawati, Wiranto is the nominee of the Golkar Party. Golkar once was the political machine of Soeharto.

It has found favor with the electorate, and became the largest bloc in parliament in April's legislative poll. Golkar is seen as the most effective political machine in Indonesia and is said to have accumulated a considerable war chest.

Wiranto is also likely to get the support of the party of former President Abdurrahman Wahid – the country's third-largest. Wahid was disqualified from running because of multiple health problems, including near blindness.