National tally confirms victory of Yudhoyono's party

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JAKARTA, May 9 Kyodo -
The official tally of Indonesia's parliamentary elections confirmed late
Saturday that an Indonesian party that backs President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
won the April 9 elections.
The General Election Commission said the Democrat Party grabbed 20.85 percent
of the popular vote that gave it 148 seats in the 560-seat House of
Representatives, the lower house of the legislature.
The Golkar Party, the political vehicle of late strongman Suharto before he was
deposed, came in second in both popularity and seats with 14.45 percent of the
votes cast and 108 seats, down from 21.6 percent and 128 seats in the 2004
elections.
The Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle, led by Yudhoyono's predecessor
Megawati Sukarnoputri, took third place in the popular vote with 14.03 percent
and 95 seats.
The results confirmed several quick counts released on election day.
Six other parties got less than 8 percent of the vote, but can cross the 2.5
percent threshold they need to gain a seat in the parliament.
Among such parties is the Muslim-based Prosperous Justice Party, which grabbed
a surprising 7.34 percent of the vote in the 2004 election for its vocal
support of the Palestinian cause.
Many political analysts had earlier predicted a setback in the latest election
following its casting of the late Suharto as a ''national hero,'' which sparked
a slew of protests. But the national tally showed the contrary. The party
gained 7.88 percent, a slight increase from the previous election.
The Great Indonesian Movement Party, known as Gerindra, founded by Suharto's
former son-in-law Prabowo Subianto, a former army general with an abysmal human
rights record, had been tipped by political analysts as the likely biggest
winner among new parties.
According to the quick count, the party gained about 4.46 percent of the vote,
a significant figure for a newcomer.
Subianto headed the army's special force command KOPASSUS, which allegedly
kidnapped and tortured political and student activists in 1998 under Suharto's
rule.
More than 171 million Indonesians were eligible to vote, but 49,677,076 of them
did not exercise their voting rights. Voter turnout was 71 percent.
Under current election law, only political parties or a coalition of parties
that have won 25 percent of nationally valid votes, or hold a fifth of the
seats in the parliament, have the right to nominate presidential candidates.
Calculating the electoral seats is very complicated. Because electoral
districts have different numbers of eligible voters, the percentage of the
popular vote won does not automatically translate into a proportional number of
parliamentary seats won.
Winning a seat in a populous region of Java, for example, requires as many as
four times the votes as winning a seat in a remoter area of the vast Indonesian
archipelago.
Golkar, however, has built a coalition with the Hanura Party, headed by
Wiranto, a retired general who led Indonesia's armed forces at the time East
Timor voted for independence from Indonesia in 1999, and other smaller parties.
Golkar has nominated its chairman, Jusuf Kalla, who is also Yudhoyono's vice
president, as a presidential candidate with Wiranto as his running mate. The
Hanura Party grabbed 3.77 percent in popular vote.
Seat allocation in the 132-seat upper house, called the Regional
Representatives Council, was also announced. Four individuals represent each
province in the upper house.
The lower and upper houses form the People's Consultative Assembly, Indonesia's
national legislature.
==Kyodo