With almost 15 percent of the vote counted, President Megawati Sukarnoputri's party yesterday had a slight lead over its main rival, the Golkar Party of former dictator Suharto, in parliamentary elections.
The official tally from Monday's polls put Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle at 20.45 percent of the estimated 124 million votes cast, with Golkar just behind at 19.94 percent.
Because of communication difficulties between the thou-sands of islands in the Indonesian archipelago, results from the polls are expected to continue trickling in over the next several days.
Earlier results had put Golkar in the lead. Analysts predicted the results would continue to seesaw as returns from different provinces arrive in Jakarta.
On Tuesday, the Washington-based National Democratic Institute released a private poll showing Golkar strongly ahead with 22.7 percent and Megawati's party with 18.8 percent.
It said the survey was reliable and identical polls had accurately predicted the outcome of elections in scores of countries worldwide.
Officials at Megawati's party have already conceded that its share of the vote will be way down from the 34 percent it won in the country's last election in 1999. Golkar won 22 percent that year.
The projected drop in the vote for Megawati's party was expected to dent her re-election prospects in the country's first direct presidential polls in July.
Indonesians voted Monday for a 550-seat lower house, a 128-seat upper house, and local and provincial councils. It was the second free election since Suharto's fall in 1998.
Megawati's party's poor showing has been interpreted as a reflection of voter frustration with Megawati, the daughter of the country's founding father Sukarno, who came into office in July 2001 promising reforms but failed to combat corruption or promote change.
Official results showed that a new party, formed recently by former security chief Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's and the small Islamic-based Party of Justice and Prosperity, are both doing well, having taken votes from Megawati and several moderate religious-based parties.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of