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| Southeast Asia |
| Golkar to pick presidential candidate |
| 2004-04-21 |
| The old party of former Indonesian autocrat Suharto, leading the vote count from this month's parliamentary elections, will choose a candidate on Tuesday to compete in presidential polls in July. The five men vying to top Golkar's ticket at a convention in Jakarta are party chief and favourite Akbar Tandjung, retired army generals Wiranto and Prabowo Subianto and two businessmen little known outside the capital. Tandjung served as a minister under Suharto while Wiranto and Subianto were generals at the end of his long rule. Some 500 Golkar branch officials will vote later in the day, although opinion polls show no candidate beating presidential frontrunner and former chief security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, or incumbent President Megawati Sukarnoputri. The vote comes just days after Yudhoyono announced his running mate would be the respected Jusuf Kalla, who quit the cabinet as chief social welfare minister on Monday and who until the weekend had been scheduled to compete in Golkar's race. ``Golkar is showing it can move forward to become a modern party through a democratic mechanism, such as this convention,'' said political analyst Indra Piliang from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Golkar is the only one of 24 political parties selecting presidential candidates through a multi-layered system, copying Western democracies. Others will mainly put their most popular personalities at the top of presidential tickets. Indonesians will directly choose their president for the first time on July 5, a ballot that has allowed a candidate such as Yudhoyono to steal a march on the bigger parties. Tandjung is expected to win Golkar's candidacy after the Supreme Court overturned a graft conviction against him earlier this year. He had been credited with navigating Golkar through a storm of criticism that followed Suharto's downfall in 1998. Tandjung insisted Golkar was the best qualified to lead Indonesia during its transition to democracy. ``We will never kill democracy. We must guarantee that democratic ways will continue. The government should not make itself distant from the people,'' Tandjung said in a speech. During Suharto's 32-year rule, Golkar was his political vehicle and dominated parliament. It easily won five-yearly elections that were regarded as unfair. Golkar has distanced itself from Suharto, who backed another party in the April 5 parliamentary vote, while trying to tap into memories of Suharto's strong leadership. With some two thirds of the parliamentary vote counted, Golkar leads with 21.11 percent, followed by Megawati's Indonesia Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P) with 19.49 percent. Tandjung's strongest challenge comes from Wiranto, a former military chief who has been charged in East Timor over alleged human rights abuses after bloodshed that followed the territory's vote to break from Jakarta's rule in 1999. Some Golkar officials believe Wiranto is best placed to compete against presidential favourite Yudhoyono, himself a former general. Yudhoyono will be the presidential candidate of the small Democrat Party. While opinion polls show Golkar has little chance of winning the presidency, its weight in parliament will force any president to accommodate it. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |