Print

Mail

wiki links

Indonesia's Megawati says she's no soy-sauce monger

Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri shows her supporters how to vote for her party, the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle, at a rally in Gianyar on the resort island of Bali yesterday. Megawati kicked-off her election campaign today in Bali, a stonghold for her and her party and the home of her ancestors. PHOTO: REUTERS

Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri kicked off her re-election campaign yesterday, predicting her party would win next month's parliamentary polls and denying charges that she is aloof.

"If I speak too much, people who don't like me will say I am no better than a seller of soy sauce," she told thousands of supporters decked out in the red-and-black colors of her party on the island of Bali, her political stronghold.

Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle is expected to lose votes at the polls scheduled for April 5. Recent surveys say it could emerge behind the Golkar Party, the country's other main secular grouping and the one-time political vehicle of ex-dictator Suharto.

However, she is still the favorite to win the country's first direct presidential polls scheduled for July, where she will be able to trade more directly on her status as the daughter of Indonesia's founding father, Sukarno.

Megawati told the crowd that if her party won the ballot it would continue with development projects on the island.

"The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle will defiantly win," she said. "As your leader I will be ashamed if we lose."

Critics have accused Megawati of not caring about Indonesia's millions of poor, who voted for her in droves at the country's last election in 1999.

She's also proven reluctant to punish those responsible for widespread human rights abuses during the Suharto era and those involved in high-profile corruption cases.
This story has been viewed 2224 times.