Megawati Sukarnoputri

The ballots from the June 7 parliamentary elections in Indonesia are being slowly (agonizingly slowly) counted, but it seems that the winner is Megawati Sukarnoputri's "Indonesian Democratic Party--Struggle," known by its Indonesian acronym, PDI-P. Only about 40% of the vote had been counted as of this writing, but Megawati's party had about 40% of the vote tallied, compared to the 20% or so garnered by the ruling Golkar party, the party of long-time ruler Suharto, who overthrew Sukarno -- Megawati's father -- in a military coup thirty years ago.

This would make a good soap opera if the people dying to play a role weren't really dying.

By June 11, protests had already begun over the perception of fraud in the ballots. The earliest returns, the first one percent, had Golkar earning single digits, to the delight of many across the archipelago. But as the counting wore on, and Golkar's percentage creeped up and up, suspicion arose that Golkar wasn't, well, on the up and up.

Student leaders rallied in Jakarta to protest the delaying of the results, charging that such delay was giving Golkar a chance to cook the books. One student leader said, "We see that there is still foul play within the general election... We can see that from the constant delaying of the results. There's just too much intervention from the government within the General Election Commission." The molasses-like pace is understandable. This is, after all, the first open parliamentary election in Indonesian history, and the Indonesians aren't too experienced at it. Also understandable is the fear that Golkar, which has stolen every election for thirty years, might be trying to do so once again, only this time it would have to steal the election quietly.

Golkar is perfectly willing to attempt to steal the elections, no matter what this newfangled fairness is supposed to be. One local election observer group said that Golkar was handing out 100,000 rupiah bills to people headed to the polls. That's about US$12.50, probably enough to feed a family for a few days. And Professor Damien Kingsbury of Australia's quite reputable Monash University, an expert on Indonesian politics, said that in North Jakarta, about 10% of the ballots distributed already had been marked for Golkar.

But if Golkar were cheating, why would it cheat only to boost its standing to 20%? That would be like a D minus student showing enough ingenuity to break in to the school's computerized grading records, in order to raise his grade to a C. But 20% might be, just barely, good enough for Golkar's current head, B.J. Habibie, to stay in power.

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