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JAKARTA: Indonesian opposition leader Megawati
Sukarnoputri’s campaign team refused to concede defeat Friday to
an apparent landslide election win by incumbent President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono.
The Megawati camp alleges
widespread fraud in the Wednesday vote, including millions of fake
voters, after a provisional official count giving Yudhoyono 61.88
percent of the vote to Megawati’s 28.57 percent.
“It seems that SBY has the
compelling urge to be congratulated,” Megawati campaign spokesman
Aria Bima told Agence France-Presse, referring to the president by
his nickname.
“We’re reluctant to
congratulate SBY because we’re still waiting for the final
official results from the electoral commission.”
Megawati’s running mate and
former special forces chief Prabowo Subianto has said the campaign
was preparing legal action over alleged fraud, while Megawati has
denounced the poll as an exercise in “pseudo-democracy.”
“We’re still counting an
accumulation of violations regarding voters being registered twice,
children on the electoral rolls and vote counting irregularities.
We’ll report this to the supervisory body,” Bima said.
Despite the allegations, most
political analysts say the election was largely free and fair and
that Yudhoyono’s apparent victory was so big as to make any voter
list irregularities irrelevant.
Economic and political stability
during the president’s four-and-a-half year term—as well as
well-timed direct cash payments to the poor and fuel price
cuts—are generally credited with cementing the president’s
popularity.
Yudhoyono himself has avoided
explicitly claiming victory, but made a show to the media Thursday
of announcing a congratulatory telephone call from his other poll
rival, incumbent Vice President Jusuf Kalla.
He has also said he has received
calls of congratulations from world leaders including Malaysian
Prime Minister Najib Razak and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Speculation has already begun on
the shape of a future Yudhoyono cabinet and the constellation of
parties set to join his governing coalition.
Legislative elections in April
saw his Democratic Party leap from relative obscurity to become the
largest party in parliament, raising hopes he will use his victory
to appoint capable technocrats to his Cabinet and deepen efforts to
fight entrenched corruption.
Democratic Party deputy chairman
Anas Urbaningrum left the door open to Megawati’s Democratic Party
of Struggle (PDI-P) and Kalla’s Golkar entering a Yudhoyono
Cabinet, but said a concession of defeat from Megawati would be
“sweet.”
“It’ll be a brilliant lesson
in democracy if Megawati congratulates [Yudhoyono]. It can be an
example of mature and noble behavior. Winning and losing is a
natural process in a democracy,” Urbaningrum said.
Megawati reportedly never
congratulated Yudhoyono after he unseated her by a landslide in the
country’s first direct presidential election in 2004, and refused
to talk to him until the current campaign.
Kalla campaign spokesman Yuddy
Chrisnandi said it was too early to say if Golkar would consider
siding with Yudhoyono in his second term.
--AFP
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