JAKARTA — Tens of political parties are competing to court voters for Indonesia's parliamentary elections, though analysts predict that only a trickle of them stand a chance of winning a piece of the cake.
"I predict that less than ten parties would survive in the parliamentary election," Andrinof Chaniago, professor of political science at the University of Indonesia, told IslamOnline.net.
Voters in the world's most populous country go to the ballot boxes on April 9 to elect members of both chambers of the parliament in the third general elections since the fall of the Suharto dictatorship.
The election campaign kicked off on Monday, March 17, with the participation of 38 national parties, along with six local parties in the newly-autonomous province of Aceh.
The vote will see about 12,000 candidates vying for 128 seats in the upper house and 550 seats in the lower house.
Major parties are expected to hold massive campaign rallies over the next 21 days to lure the country's 171 million registered voters.
Representatives of the national parties have signed a joint declaration promising a peaceful campaigning as they compete for the hearts and minds of the voters.
Fachry Ali, a political analyst, believes that with many key issues at the forefront of voters' concerns, from tackling corruption to improving infrastructure and the economic crisis, inexperienced players will not survive for long.
"Most of them are having insufficient knowledge of democracy."
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country of 240 million people, is categorized as the most democratic country in Southeast Asia.
Big Five
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| Representatives of the parties have signed a joint declaration promising a peaceful campaigning as they compete for the hearts and minds of the voters. |
Professor Andrinof says the main contenders are five parties, led by the Democratic Party of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and its ally Golkar party of Vice President Yusuf Kalla.
The other three favorites are the Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) of former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, the Nation Awakening Party (PKB), and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).
The president's party, which has delivered many of the promises made in the last election, is well ahead of rivals in opinion polls.
A new survey by the Indonesian Survey Institute showed the party was the frontrunner with support of 24 percent -- up from just 7.5 percent of the actual votes in the 2004 elections.
It linked the increasing support to the popularity of President Yudhoyono.
"President Yudhoyono is still an icon of the Democratic Party in the next election," MP Sutan Batugana told IOL.
"So, he is on the right track. We expect to get majority seats the next election."
Megawati's PDIP and Golkar are competing for the second place with 20 percent and 18 percent of the votes successively, according to the nationwide survey.
The PKS, an Islamic-rooted party, has its eye on the third spot.
"Our target is to reach the third biggest in national level in the next election," Tri Handhono of the party's Campaign Strategy Commission told IOL.
The party, which was established by a group of Muslim intellectuals and scholars in 1998, has grown in popularity significantly over the past decade.
It is now dominating in cities across the country while remote areas are mostly controlled by the more established parties.
Handhono says PKS is working to achieve its target through many tools, including the use of media to polish its image.
"But door-to-door campaign is more effective to reach targets in remote areas."
The party likely to get the least chances among the big five is the nationalist PKB, established by former president Abdurrahman Wahid.
The PKB, born of the womb of Nahdlatul Ulama, the biggest Muslim organization in the world, faces internal rifts and feuds.
It currently has 57 seats in parliament.
Gamal Ferdhi, a researcher at the Wahid Institute, predicts that the party will not fare well in the April vote.
"Due to the rift, I don't think PKB will get such significant number of voters."
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