It's that Man Again

So the New Year is upon us. The campaign remains quiet with a few notable exceptions. The most prominent is the Democratic Party of incumbent president SBY. Goodness me, that man gets around. Every single day of the slightest significance prompts another TV ad. Just before Christmas it was "Happy Mother's Day from the Democrat Party and SBY". Then there was the 2009 New Year and the Islamic New Year (two for the price of one there). The man's face is everywhere on posters. And in the latest TV ad spectacular, the party has the bare-faced cheek to take credit for lowering fuel prices (forgetting to mention that SBY's government put them up in the first place). So scared is SBY of taking any decisions that might cost him election glory, he is in the process of missing a golden opportunity to get rid of fuel subsidies (which cost the country Rp132 trillion a year - four times the number 2 budget item - education!). Now oil prices are low, all he has to do is remove subsidies: if they rise again it would no longer be the government's fault!

Meanwhile, Gerindra, the party of disgraced former "special" forces commander Prabowo (and former murder suspect Muchdi) continues to run expensive ads targeted at the poor - whom Prabowo presumably hopes will have forgotten his inglorious past in the human rights field.

In at number three in the TV ad splurge is vice-president Jusuf Kalla's Golkar Party, which is playing the "protector of national stability, force behind national development" card. Again, hopes must be high of collective amnesia.

The rest of the parties have gone rather quiet, and only a few are bothering to replace the wind-shredded party flags and banners. Among these are the Crescent Star Party, Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle and a tiny new party headed by the daughter of a national hero, the National People's Concern Party. Not really sure why they're bothering, unless they know something we don't...