Anyone But Jokowi

So the counting is underway, presumably. Unlike every previous election, even in the bad old days of the New Order, there have been no updates of the votes so far. Optimists will say this is no problem - after all the results aren't due to be announced until the beginning of May, so the General Elections Commission is just doing its job in completely unprecedented, but entirely legal, secrecy.

However, it is important to remember that people like Golkar leader Aburizal Bakrie and Gerindra leader Prabowo must be absolutely desperate to stop the wildly popular Jokowi from entering the presidential race because they would lose. Although the political elite in Jakarta think that the selection of the country's leader is up to them, rather than the people, in 20o9 the electorate reelected current president SBY because most people genuinely wanted him to win. This has terrified the elite, who are faced with the prospect of surrendering the choice of leader to the people. And given a choice, they are likely to pick the Indonesian Party of Struggle's (PDIP) candidate, Jokowi, in the presidential election on 9 July.

So, how to stop him? In the old days, it was just a matter of fiddling the count. However, thanks to a number of quick count results announced shortly after the legislative election polls closed, that won't be so easy. If the final vote of any of the major parties turns out to be wildly different from the quick count results, all of which are in reasonable agreement, everybody will cry foul.

In order to nominate a presidential candidate, a party must either win 25% of the popular vote in the legislative elections (none did) or control 20% of the seats in the legislature, the DPR. That would be 112 seats. Parties are allowed to join together to make up either total. Therefore to stop the PDIP nominating Jokowi, the other parties have to ensure it cannot find enough support from other parties. The easiest way to do this is for the two richest parties (with the two most desperate presidential wannabes) to simply pay off the other parties so they won't join the PDIP coalition. But...ooops. The Nasdem Party vehicle of media tycoon Suraya Paloh has announced it will back Jokowi. The total vote of the PDIP + Nasdem is around 26%, which is just enough. Surya Paloh is so rich that he'd probably prefer political power to even more money, making him immune to bribes that Golkar or Gerindra could afford. And since Nasdem has cracked, other minor parties may well feel that it's too late, and they might as well join the PDIP - except for the terminally foolish United Development Party (PPP), which has just been overruled by its leader and has backed Jokowi.

Option 2 then is to stop the PDIP (and now Nasdem) from getting their 112 seats. One way to do this would be to play games with the vote shares at the provincial level to ensure that the national share of the vote still agrees with the quick counts, but that the PDIP + Nasdem don't win, thanks to the complex way these things are worked out.

For them to get away with this, there would have to be no announcements at all about the ongoing count so they have time to fiddle things between the count being finished and the results being announced...

Now what?

So the voting has come and gone for most areas, apart from the odd mix-up. No sign of any counting so far, which is rather odd...

Nobody got the 25 percent of the vote they needed to nominate the president of their choice. The biggest surprise was the poor performance of the Indonesian Party of Struggle (PDI-P): the much talked about "Jokowi effect" - a magical rise in their fortunes as a result of nominating the popular governor of Jakarta for the presidency - didn't really happen. According to the "quick count" result, the party got around 19%, little better than in 2004, and the 33% of 1999 seems to have been an all-time high for the party. Or perhaps the Jokowi effect was little more than a minor reversal of the PDI-P''s decline.

In any case, they stuffed it up. At the start of the campaign, all the PDI-P TV ads featured party chairwoman Megawati's daughter Puan, who is little more than a thinner and slightly less stupid version of her mother. Perhaps the PDI-P looked at the results of its private polling and had a bit of a panic at the projected vote for Mussolini wannabee Prabowo's Gerindra Party vehicle, so hastily nominated Jokowi for the top job. By then it was too late, and the party didn't do nearly as well as Mega had hoped.

Meanwhile, the Islamist parties, having been written off by many (including me, ahem!) did better than expected. This may be the result of a very low turnout, with only the loyal supporters of the minor parties (including startup Nasdem) having bothered to turn out. Those who voted for the major parties last time may well have stayed at home in disgust, and the percentage of the vote (not the actual number of votes) of the small parties rose as a result.

And now who gets to run for the presidency. History tells us that the PDI-P will find an Islamist non-entity to run as vice-president alongside the nationalist Jokowi. But the PDI-P may well be tempted to sidle up to the National Awakening Party (PKB), which seems to have won around 9%, presumably mostly in its East Java stronghold. Despite not having a serious presidential candidate (singer Rhoma Irama?! Please!), 19+9=28. The PDI-P may well feel the need to recruit more widely, perhaps flirting with media tycoon Surya Paloh's Nasdem Party vehicle. That should produce some sympathetic coverage on Surya's Metro TV.

Meanwhile the Golkar Party may end up getting into bed with Prabowo's Gerindra Party and a few other minnows. Insanely presidency-obsessed Prabowo may settle for the vice-presidential spot if Golkar leader Bakrie provides a cast-iron promise to support Prabowo for the presidency in 2014. Bakrie will then have 5 years to think of a way to break that promise, which should be plenty of time.

Nothing, even the turnout, is certain yet, because of the strange silence from the General Elections Commission. Unlike previous years, there have been no announcements at all about the interim count - not even from the capital, where the process should be easier. All rather odd...