Indonesia ready to vote for change

Indonesia, the world's third largest democracy, will go to the polls on Wednesday with voters tipped to support the party of the popular Jakarta governor.

Indonesia will vote for change when it goes to the polls for the world's largest one-day elections.

In the world's third largest democracy, about 186 million voters will choose from around 200,000 candidates at national, regional and municipal level on Wednesday.

Voting is not compulsory, but a public holiday has been declared to encourage attendance at 550,000 polling stations across the country.

The legislative elections will determine the make up of the House of Representatives.

The 12 parties contesting the election need 20 per cent of the seats or 25 per cent of the vote to put their candidate into the July presidential race without entering a coalition.

According to the polls, voters are ready to support the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) in droves.

A Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) poll last week found 20.1 per cent support for the PDI-P, thanks largely to its enormously popular presidential candidate Joko Widodo.

Running sixth was the Democratic Party of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is not able to contest this election after two terms in office.

It was favoured by only 5.8 per cent of those surveyed, with pollsters blaming a string of corruption scandals for eroding the party's support.

Democrats insiders claim the party is confident of winning more than 10 per cent of the vote on Wednesday, but it is still a huge loss from its 21 per cent result in 2009.

Another problem is that the party hasn't yet selected a presidential candidate.

It has campaigned largely on the record of SBY, in contrast to the PDI-P's promise of change, led by the young and unconventional Jakarta governor whom everyone calls "Jokowi".

A powerful bloc in this electorate is the young, with 29 per cent of voters under 30. About 21 million are first-time voters.

As well as traditional outdoor rallies, the past three weeks of campaigning has also been fought on social media, in a bid to capture the imagination of this group.

The logistical exercise is immense - Indonesia is an archipelagic nation with 922 inhabited islands.

However the nation has already proven three times since autocratic president Suharto was forced to resign in 1998 that it is capable of holding free, fair and peaceful elections.


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Source: AAP


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