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...