All Stop. Full Steam Ahead

For some reason the counting of the legislative election results seems to have stopped completely. At least that's according the the General Election Commission (KPU) website, where the total cotes counted has been stuck at 14,484,189 for 24 hours. Have they given up trying to meet the deadline, or are they just not telling anyone what they're up to? On top of all the cockups by the KPU (chaos over the electoral roll, eligible voters not listed and therefore disenfranchised, the campaign schedule having to be changed after the campaign was already underway, ballot papers sent to the wrong provinces), this latest oddity is hardly likely to inspire confidence.

Meanwhile former president Megawati Sukarnoputri and her two new friends, the Hanura Party's former general (and indicted war criminal) Wiranto and former general (and human rights abuser) Prabowo are toying with the idea of boycotting the presidential election - not because they don't think they can won - perish the though! No, it's dur to the widepsread "fraud" in the election. Prabowo even went so far as to claim that instead of his apparent measly 5% of the vote, the fact that so many of his supporters were disenfranchised means that he actually shoul have 10%. OK, but in that case, unless the KPU is far cleverer than it looks, all parties would have suffered equally, so their vote percentages should be doubles as well. That should lead to a turnout of well over 100% - rather like the elections Indonesia's New Order used to run (with the support of people like Wiranto and Prabowo).

And poor old Jusuf Kalla still doesn't know what to do. President SBY doesn't want him, and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) even threatened to have nothing to do with his Democratic Party if he runs with JK. So Kalla is frantically looking for enough politcal dregs to scrape together to get enough votes to nominate himself. Him and Megawati running against each other should see SBY safely back to the Palace. This is assuming the boycott doesn't happen - and it does seem unlikely that the parties will all put self-interest last and support it. If the boycott did work, it would mean the presidential election would be delayed until the president issued a decree in lieu of law to change the preconditions for nomination, and a long delay could see Indonesia without a president until it's all sorted out.

Assuming Mega is too stubborn to stand down and she and Kalla each find somebody seen as suitable to run with, the presidential election may go to a run off, presenting the KPU with two more chances to make a dog's dinner of things. Time, or perhaps money, will tell.