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In Indonesia, media on the payroll

Koran Indonesia looks deceptively like a normal newspaper, but is clearly slanted to make Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri's government look good. "The economy has recovered," reads one headline, while another announces: "Farmers are getting wealthier."

The paper appeared on newsstands on the first day of campaigning for Indonesia's first direct presidential elections, and it comes as no surprise that it's funded by Megawati's campaign team.

It is one of the more innovative -- and some might say sneaky -- ways the five candidates contesting the July 5 polls are trying to win over Indonesia's 150 million voters.

For the first time in the country's history, candidates are fighting to get their message directly to the populace, spending millions on TV and radio commercials and full-page newspaper advertisements.

Previously, voters were bypassed in a system where lawmakers acting as an electoral college picked the president. The system, devised by former dictator Suharto, returned him to power six times until he was ousted in 1998.

Spreading the word about the candidates is not limited to the mass media. Campaign workers also hand out bars of soap, cooking oil, kites and wrist watches emblazoned with candidates' faces at rallies.

Banners bearing simple slogans hang from trees and lampposts and even from cemetery gates across the country.

The top three presidential hopefuls are said to have accumulated huge war chests, mostly in unregulated donations from by wealthy business people seeking favors from future administrations.

So far, Megawati's campaign has spent around US$480,000 on advertisements alone, according to a survey by anti-corruption watchdogs.

She is leading the spending rush -- both on conventional ads and on efforts like Koran Indonesia, which appear to circumvent Indonesia's weak campaign finance laws.

Readers of Koran Indonesian have to get to the fine print at the bottom of page two before they learn that Megawati's campaign team produces the paper.

The 300,000-circulation broadsheet is supposedly on sale for a small sum, but is actually distributed for free.
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