The legislative elections in Indonesia which just took place (on April 9, 2009) were intended to form a political platform on which could be established possible partnerships for the presidential race. While parties must wait for the final count, conducted by the General Election Commission (KPU), the general balance of power among political parties is already known publicly.

The tallying of election results has become a problem of its own. Three counting methods have been employed, namely, quick counts (conducted by survey institutions), real counting (conducted by the KPU by means of information technology) and manual counts. Manual counts are the only method that has legal validity.

So far, quick counts have been the main source of information on the election results, despite this method's lack of legal validity. Real counting has been stopped and apparently accomplished not more than 10-12 percent of its designated workload.

Manual counting has become a mammoth task because only a very small portion of ballots have been received by the KPU.

Under the initial plan, the final results were to be announced on May 9, 2009. However, given the recent developments this will be almost impossible, and the delay will in turn have a direct impact on the presidential election timeline.

Technical and administrative problems notwithstanding, the political parties do not want to wait any longer to begin negotiating coalitions given the present political circumstances.

During negotiations, some typical tensions have come to the fore: First, there has been tensions surrounding public accountability and the conduct of the elections. The government has insisted on carrying on with the elections, while disregarding several serious problems that have emerged.

Several political parties not in winning positions have said there were too many transgressions of the election law, meaning the elections were fundamentally flawed. The winning party, meanwhile, has reminded the public it should not exaggerate the elections' shortcomings, because such a response could create a political situation far from conducive to the continuation of the election process.

Second, tensions have been seen in intra-party conflicts. The Golkar Party is a good case in point. Before the legislative elections there was already a strained difference of opinion regarding the role of Vice President Jusuf Kalla in that party. One side wanted Kalla to remain the vice president of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, because this was the most realistic way for Golkar to stay in power. The other side contended that the party was too big and too experienced to opt for the second best position in government.

As it turned out, the latter side prevailed, and Kalla was given a mandate by regional Golkar leaders to run for president. Following the recent legislative elections, however, the likelihood of Kalla becoming president is very slim because Golkar gained far less votes than the party had hoped. To pass the eligibility threshold (25 percent of popular votes) it needs to nominate a presidential candidate, Golkar must form a coalition with at least one other big party.

The most ideal coalition for it would be with the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), because combined the two parties would account for roughly 28 percent of the popular vote, allowing them to pass the threshold safely.

The prospects of this coalition becoming a reality, however, are not good since negotiations came to a deadlock as both Kalla and PDI-P chairwoman Megawati Soekarno-putri both expressed their intentions of becoming president.

Kalla seems to be facing difficulties two ways: internally he has to account for Golkar's loss in the legislative elections, while externally he has to find a coalition partner who will support his candidacy for president. Similar intra-party splits can be seen in the National Mandate Party (PAN) and the United Development Party (PPP).

Third, tensions will be seen between the nine parties that passed the parliamentary threshold and the other 29 that did not. This will happen if the contending coalitions have relatively similar numbers of votes and need to get additional votes from smaller parties.

At every stage of the coalition building process, however, negotiations will be extremely tough. The first stage of bargaining will pertain to who will be coalitions' presidential candidates. The remaining stages will relate to the positioning of parties within coalitions.

In these negotiations one principal factor will be put to the test: whether parties choose to keep their dignity and sacrifice the opportunity to gain power, for the sake of their own self-respect, or choose to sacrifice their own principles for any opportunity to gain power at any cost. In other words, parties must choose between maintaining their power while possibly losing followers, or maintaining followers but sacrificing undeserved opportunity.

The writer is a sociologist and chairman of the Indonesian Community for Democracy (KID)

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