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Indonesian vote-buyers get busy

Supporters of the Golkar party show their anger toward anti-Golkar students during a campaign rally in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Wednesday. Recent polls place the party in the top spot, amid discontent over a relatively sluggish economy and widespread corruption. PHOTO: AFP

Vote-buying brokers will be busy in the hours just before polling stations open today for Indonesia's parliamentary elections.

In operations dubbed "dawn attacks," middlemen across the vast country will go from door to door offering money for votes for clients ranging from major political parties to first-time candidates, analysts and watchdog groups say.

"We offer 100,000 rupiah (US$11.66) face to face to the voter and we threaten a bit to warn them not to fool us," one Jakarta-based broker who declined to be identified said.

"But we need to be careful as nowadays people are smarter and, if we step on their toes, they will scream," he said, adding that he aims to get one-third of the votes in one of his targeted polling stations.

More than 147 million Indonesians are eligible to vote in 585,000 polling stations to choose representatives for the 550-seat national parliament, the newly established regional representative council and their respective local legislatures.

The dawn attacks are just the final and least subtle effort to win votes through incentives.

In the formal campaign period that ended last week, parties and candidates tried to attract voters with giveaways ranging from rice and radios to cigarettes and hard cash.

With one credible recent survey showing one-third of voters still undecided and even the top party, Golkar, garnering well under that, election watchers and some contestants fear the dawn attacks could become a wild-card factor.

Golkar was the political vehicle of former Indonesian president Mohamed Suharto, who ruled with an iron fist for 32 years until his downfall in 1998.

In this election, Indonesia's old-guard party has tried to distance itself from the negative side of Suharto's rule while playing on memories of rapid economic growth and stability.

Recent surveys have Golkar breaking away from its closest rival, incumbent Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri's PDI-P, after the polls showed the two neck-and-neck for months, but it still is winning barely more than 20 percent of the vote.

Legislator Rully Chairul Azwar, Golkar's point man in this year's elections, knows victory is still uncertain.

"Polls have forecast that we will be the winner and the campaign has heartened us. But the dawn attacks can be a dangerous element in the last stretch," said Azwar, Golkar's main campaign secretary.

Amien Rais, one of Megawati's rivals for the top job in the July 5 presidential vote, told his National Mandate Party supporters to outsmart the brokers.

"If you are bribed, take the money because it's actually yours. The distributed cash is public funds that have been corrupted," he said.

The General Election Commission (KPU) supported the call.

"The dawn attacks hit us bad in 1999 but our people now know better. They'll take the money and pick another party. Nobody knows the choice in the booth," said KPU chief Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin, referring to the last time Indonesians voted.

Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) said almost all parties would use vote-buying tactics to secure votes.

"Some wait until the results are out first before they pay up. Some don't want to pay in full in advance anymore."

The combination of blatant and subtle tactics was apparent in the 20-day campaigning period, in which most of the 24 contesting parties paid people to people to attend rallies in order to swell the turnout.
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