Indonesian Ministers Challenge President

President Megawati Sukarnoputri, seeking reelection in Indonesia’s first direct presidential vote, is facing a serious challenge from two of her former Cabinet ministers who have formed their own ticket and vaulted to the top in opinion polls.

Megawati, who has alienated many voters with what they perceive as lackluster leadership in addressing the country’s sweeping economic problems, made a dismal showing in parliamentary elections two weeks ago. Her party captured less than one-fifth of the nationwide vote, according to incomplete returns.

Now she must contend in the July 5 presidential election with the formidable alliance of presidential candidate Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the former senior minister for security affairs and a retired four-star general, and vice presidential candidate Yusuf Kalla, the former welfare minister and a successful businessman.

In a predominantly Muslim country where pragmatism rather than ideology often drives politics, alliances have formed across party lines as each presidential candidate jockeys to recruit a promising running mate.

A public opinion survey conducted last week by the Jakarta-based Soegeng Sarjadi Syndicate showed that Yudhoyono led Megawati by a whopping 44% to 21%. The same poll showed that Kalla led the field of possible vice presidential candidates with 21%.

“I think it will be difficult for Megawati to win the presidential election,” said Sukardi Rinakit, executive director of the syndicate, a political studies center. “People are very disappointed. They want a new figure who can solve problems overnight.”

At a time when voters are tired of corruption and are seeking strong leadership, he said, Yudhoyono and Kalla are widely viewed as honest and more decisive than Megawati.

Kalla announced Monday that he was resigning from Megawati’s Cabinet after agreeing Sunday to join Yudhoyono’s ticket. The retired general, who heads the newly formed Democratic Party, resigned from the Cabinet last month in a dispute with Megawati.

“I accepted Mr. Yudhoyono’s proposal to be his vice presidential candidate,” Kalla told reporters. “We are old friends and have worked together for years. We are committed to establishing a solid government that is strong and honest.”

Megawati, the daughter of Indonesia’s founding president, Sukarno, has been a reclusive ruler who only appears in public at carefully managed events. She has not enunciated a program to solve the nation’s economic ills as graft has run rampant and the number of unemployed has soared to 42 million, nearly one-fifth of the population.

Although she has been president for nearly three years and was vice president for two years before that, Megawati casts herself as an ordinary “housewife” coping with Indonesia’s problems.

“They said that I am just a housewife who cannot do anything right,” Megawati told thousands of supporters at a recent rally in Jakarta. “Well, this housewife is still able to draw a crowd like this.”

Megawati was chosen president by the People’s Consultative Assembly, a 700-member group made of parliament and special representatives -- a body similar to the Electoral College that selects the president of the United States. The Indonesian Constitution was amended in 2002 to provide for the direct election of the president.

As leader, Megawati has lost much of the support she once commanded, even in former strongholds such as Bali. With about three-fourths of the vote counted in the recent parliamentary elections, Megawati’s Democratic Party of Struggle is winning less than 20% of the vote, down from 34% in the 1999 election. Her party is trailing Golkar, the former ruling party of ex-President Suharto, which is garnering about 21%. In Bali, where 85% of the voters backed her in 1999, she was winning just 53%.

One of Megawati’s immediate campaign problems is finding a strong vice presidential candidate. With her former ministers running against her, she may be compelled to run with her current vice president, Hamzah Haz, a conservative Muslim whose own party opposes having a woman president. Barely 5% of the public supports his reelection, according to the recent poll.

At least three more candidates are expected to join the race for president, including parliament Speaker Akbar Tanjung, whose conviction on corruption charges was overturned by the Supreme Court this year. If no candidate wins a majority of votes on July 5, a runoff will be held in September.

Although surveys show that terrorism is one of the lowest priorities for Indonesian voters, the presence of Islamic terrorists has been a major concern for neighboring countries and the United States.

As security minister, Yudhoyono was particularly outspoken on combating the terrorism threat. Last year, after Megawati declined to attend a service in memory of the 202 victims of the Bali nightclub bombing, Yudhoyono gave a stirring speech at the memorial pledging to hunt down the perpetrators of the attack.

Kalla, meanwhile, has the distinction of having one of his businesses targeted in a terrorist bombing. A devout Muslim, he helped forged peace agreements between Muslims and Christians in the Moluccas and Sulawesi in late 2001 and early 2002 to end conflicts that killed thousands on both sides. In December 2002, a terrorist group connected with the Bali attackers bombed a car dealership he owned in Sulawesi. No one was hurt in the blast, although a bombing of a nearby McDonald’s restaurant by the same group on the same day killed three.

University of Indonesia political science lecturer Salim Said said he expects Yudhoyono and Kalla to win the election but cautioned that forging a consensus to rule is likely to be far more difficult.

The April election, he pointed out, has left parliament badly fragmented, with no party likely to control more than 25% of the seats. Yudhoyono’s party probably will win barely 10% of the seats.

“Without the support of parliament, they will end up not being able to fulfill their promise,” said Said, who received his doctorate in the United States. “This shows you, do not expect too much in the coming years.”