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...

NOT FAIR .. I want to be president!

So SBY won, as predicted. Ex general Subianto Prabowo, who owns 90 horses but has been promoting himself a champion of the poor, and who bought himself a vice-presidential ticket from Megawati Sukarnoputri has not stopped sulking since the opinion polls during the campaign showed he and his has-been sidekick were not managing to bribe their way to popularity. Then came the quick count polls on election day that showed SBY with just over 60%, Mega-Prabowo with around 37% and the joke pairing of Jusuf Kalla-Wiranto on 12%. NOT FAIR - the polls have been fixed, cried the disgraced former general. Then the results started trickling in showing similar figures. Prabowo then accused the Gneeral Election Commission of fixing the results to match the quick count polls, claiming that he had a poll showing very different numbers. And finally the General Elections Commission announced the final result: SBY with just over 60%, Mega-Prabowo with around 37% and the joke pairing of Jusuf Kalla-Wiranto on 12%.

In a sulk, Megafatty and Prabowo refused to attend the announcement of the results - at least Kalla and Wiranto turned up for that - and now both pairs of losers plan to contest the result. What does Prabowo want? The results of the poll he commissioned to be used as the official result, or a rerun of the poll? He'd take the first option if he could and does not seem to realize that he'd lose a rerun because the people are not as stupid as he hopes they are, and would rightly punish him for being such a poor loser. He does of course have Megawati to learn from in that regard. Having failed to be crowned president in 1999, she settled for the number two job until she could work with her former enemies in the military to oust poor old Gus Dur and claim the top job just like Daddy. She then did nothing for three years and was defeated in the 2004 presidential election. She didn't accept that result either and refused to speak to, yet alone congratulate her successor.

So despite the statements that all candidates were prepared to accept victory or defeat, the childish actions of the losers show them to be unfit for the jobs they failed to get. Phew!

Jakarta, we have a problem

As of 11pm today, a week after election day, the General Elections Commission (KPU) has counted eleven million votes from 57,792 polling stations. While this may sound like a splendid effort, these figures are worrying. The problem is that there are 171,265,442 Indonesians who have the right to vote and on election day there were a total of 519,920 polling stations, each with one ballot box (Kompas, 11/4/09 page 2). Each polling station caters for a maximum of 500 voters, as laid down in Article 150 of Indonesia's Law No.10/2008. If the turnout was 100%, then 10% of ballot boxes counted would mean 10% of the maximum possible votes counted. However, while 11.1% of ballot boxes have been opened, the votes counted only amount to 6.5% of the electorate. Assuming this ratio remains consistent, this means the turnout will only be 58.4%. This means something has gone wrong somewhere. Are Indonesians really that disillusioned, or did the KPU make such a mess of the election that millions of Indonesians were deprived of their right to vote? Either way, expect complaints from the (bad) losers.

Meanwhile the count goes on, but the rate the votes are being counted at is actually slowing (as shown in the graph). Tracking the results coming in today at the official General Election Website, at the current rate, they'll need another 10 weeks to finish the job.

So it looks like the KPU are pretty incompetent. Even the president has starting blaming them. However, the 64 million Rupiah question is: was the "incompetence" systematic (favoring one particular party, such as the president's Democratic Party for instance...) or was it just bog-standard incompetence. Indonesia's voters need to know...

The Things They Say (2)

• Charman of the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDIP) Advisory Council, and husband of party leader Megawati, Taufik Kiemas:"Hanura is definite, Gerindra is definite, PPP is also definite [for a coalition with the PDIP]"

• United Development Party (PPP) secretary general Irgan Chairul Mahfiz: "The figure of SBY is more dominant and it would be very naive if the PPP did not see the tendency of the people to support SBY"

Well, the PPP - never a party to put a bargepole between itself and opportunism - seems uncertain which sinking ship to desert. It is doing fairly well so far in the count, and seems to be keeping its options open. We shall see.

Meanwhile, 4.5 million votes counted so far...