A

strong>April 10, Online

The country'€™s political parties have everything to play for following a less-than-stellar performance by the pre-poll favorite, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), in Wednesday'€™s legislative election.

With 93 percent of the vote counted as of 11:50 p.m., the PDI-P had pocketed 19.24 percent of the vote, according to a Kompas quick count.

Your comments:

 If there was a possibility of laying bare the statistics I could assure you that at least 75 percent of first-time voters did not go for the religious parties. Out of this percentage I would even dare say that at least 40 percent of them punched the ballot paper in favor of the PDI-P.

Why were there increased numbers for the National Awakening Party (PKB)? Because of the presence of Mahfud MD and also the voters, mostly older people, were disillusioned with the Democratic Party, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and their corruption thereby resulting in a split vote.

Votes that went to the NasDem Party and Hanura Party were also responsible for the shortfall experienced by the PDI-P. Altogether, I personally feel that the PDI-P came out well enough and should be proud of itself.

Valkyrie

I just saw the results from Indonesians voting in Singapore. Jokowi was way, way ahead probably because there was no vote-buying there. Some people are complaining that Jokowi doesn'€™t have enough government experience. No president in the world can run a government by himself.

He appoints experts to advise him. It would be nice to see someone who knows what they are talking about for a change instead of nepotism. I also hope that Jokowi comes out ahead.

Sheldon Archer