Indonesian challenger set for landslide win in elections

From military ceremonies to agriculture meetings, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri was seen and heard in recent weeks with a frequency that belied her reputation as a shy and taciturn leader.

But it appears she came up short in yesterday's presidential election run-off, losing easily to challenger and former chief security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, according to projections from reputable independent research groups. Early official returns also show her trailing badly.

Under presidential election rules that prohibited open, direct campaigning, Megawati, 57, made the most of public appearances that go with her office.

One of Yudhoyono's selling points, at least before Megawati started raising her profile, was that he was more willing to talk directly to the public about government policies.

"Yudhoyono is obviously a person who would come forward and say this is what we are doing, whereas Mega tends to leave it to her ministers," said Harold Crouch, an Australian academic and Indonesia expert, using Megawati's popular nickname.

An example of that was the Bali bombings in 2002 that killed 202 people. Visiting the site a day after the attack, she said nothing, and skipped a one-year commemoration in 2003, where then minister Yudhoyono gave a fiery anti-terror speech.

Although Megawati, a mother of four, won fame as an opposition symbol in the latter years of President Suharto's iron-fisted rule, her own style since taking office in 2001 has drawn fire as aloof and elitist.

TOUGH JOB

Under Megawati, a daughter of founding president Sukarno, Indonesia's stocks and currency steadied and then rose after years of battering in the wake of chaos sparked by the Asian financial crisis and then Suharto's downfall in 1998.

But for many grassroots Indonesians, that mattered less than high prices or endemic unemployment and under-employment that together affect about 40 per cent of the workforce.

Widespread corruption, an unpredictable legal system, a parliament where no party has a majority, and massive red tape are just some of the obstacles that keep foreign investors away and drag on growth.

Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of some 17,000 islands and 220 million people, also faces sporadic outbreaks of separatist, religious and ethnic violence.

Such violence has decreased under Megawati but not gone away, and a relatively new phenomenon, terrorism by Islamic militants, in the world's most populous Muslim nation, has grabbed international attention and discouraged investment.

An al Qaeda-linked group, Jemaah Islamiah, was blamed for the 2002 blast in Bali. In 2003, the same group was accused of an attack on a Jakarta hotel that killed 12, and on September 9 a car bomb outside Australia's embassy in which nine died.

Megawati cut short a trip to Brunei to fly back and visit the embassy bomb site the day of the attack, condemning it and urging calm, but she did not offer any fresh solutions.

"It was certainly more of an expression of urgent concern than she displayed after either Bali or the Marriott," said Sidney Jones, International Crisis Group Southeast Asia chief.

To fight terrorism, however, "you have got to be willing to take tough actions against some nasty institutions. You have got to make a serious public information campaign inside Indonesia, which has not been done," Jones said.

Criticised by some for seeing the presidency as a birthright thanks to her pedigree as Sukarno's child, Megawati took office more by default than design after legislators sacked then president Abdurrahman Wahid and as vice president she took over.

- REUTERS