Remember the legislative election anyone?

According to a survey by Kompas newspaper last week, only 20 percent of Indonesian voters know that the legislative elections will be held in April 2009. And it's not surprising. After a flurry of interest (in the form of celebs and flags) politicians and commentators seem to have lost interest in the elections to the House of Representatives and to be focusing all their attention on the real prize: the presidential palace.


On Wednesday 29 October, the House more or less agreed on the formula for the Presidential Election Law. The parties with the largest share of seats in the House agreed that presidential candidates can be nominated by parties or groupings of parties with at last 25 percent of seats in the House or that won at least 20 percent of the vote in the legislative election. This will mean no more than three or four candidate pairings. The National Mandate Party, which doesn't stand a chance of winning this many votes or seats on its own, is still sulking and a judicial review is not out of the question. Meanwhile the United Development Party (currently with 11% of seats) has said that it is "attracted" to incumbent president SBY as a candidate because if his anti-corruption efforts. SBY may need the help of a large party as his Democratic Party vehicle (currently with 10% of seats) is likely to need help to get him reelected. And in other developments (as they say), Golkar (23% of seats) and the other front-runner, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) (20%) seem to be getting closer.

But in the midst of all this bickering and flirting, everybody seems to have forgotten the legislative vote comes first. The date for the presidential poll has not even been set yet...