Military

DATE=05/05/04

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=INDONESIA ELEX - FINAL L-ONLY

NUMBER=2-315618

BYLINE=TIM JOHNSTON

DATELINE=JAKARTA

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: In Indonesia, the General Election Commission has announced the

final results of last month's parliamentary vote. As Tim Johnston

reports from Jakarta, the big established nationalist-secular parties

have won the most seats, but newer parties have made gains on

anti-corruption agendas, which challenge the old political ways.

TEXT: Indonesia's once long-ruling Golkar Party captured the most votes

in the April election with 22 percent. President Megawati

Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle came in a

disappointing second with just fewer than 19 percent - nearly half of

what it won in 1999.

No one party won a majority in the 550-seat parliament - making

alliances more of a focus.

And it appears that new smaller parties are on the rise with platforms

promising to tackle entrenched corruption.

Paul Rowland is the head of the independent National Democratic

Institute's office in Jakarta.

/// ROWLAND ACT ///

I think corruption is an issue that threads through everything and . I

think it was reinforced by the election campaign as much as anything

else.

/// END ACT ///

Two upstart parties on the anti-graft drive - the Democrat Party and the

Prosperous Justice Party - took more than seven percent of the vote

each.

The leader of the Democrat Party, former security minister Susilo

Bambang Yudhoyono, is widely tipped to win the country's first-ever

direct presidential elections in July.

Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country - but Muslim

parties failed to capitalize on the discontent with the incumbents.

Analysts say it is too early to predict Indonesia's new political

landscape. They say that the lack of any dominant party might make the

country more difficult to govern, particularly by anyone with a strong

reformist agenda. But they also say that relatively weak showing by the

two major parties might be the wake up call the political elite needs to

shock them into being more responsive to the desires of the electorate.

(signed)

NEB/HK/TJ/JJ