Fighting for Votes; With Indonesia's presidential election set for a runoff, the race may be decided by who has the most friends.

Byline: Joe Cochrane

On the eve of Indonesia's first direct presidential election last week, incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri was teary-eyed. The normally wooden-faced president choked up during a nationally televised appeal for a peaceful vote. She had other reasons to be stressed: surveys ahead of the July 5 vote showed her lagging in third place. But any worries she may have had--her aides say she had the flu--now appear to have been premature. Preliminary results have her firmly in second place behind former Army general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, popularly known as SBY, forcing a runoff election in September. (Final results are expected to be announced this week.) "She has a fighting chance," says Jusuf Wanandi, chairman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. "But can she change [her campaign] enough to challenge Yudhoyono?"

That largely depends on one thing--whether she can persuade the country's other major parties to swing behind her Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, or PDI-P. Yudhoyono, whom early returns show taking 34 percent of the vote, has a fresh-faced appeal as an outsider to presidential politics. Voters have responded to that image as much as to his calls for cleaner, more efficient government. But that also means he doesn't have much of a party machine behind him. His Democrat Party was created only late last year, holds a mere 57 of the 550 seats in Parliament and has only one mission--to get him elected. He appears to have slumped in the final days of campaigning as undecided voters returned to the Megawati fold. "Voters probably stuck with the devil they knew," says Wanandi. For SBY to oust Megawati in a runoff, he'll need a much more organized get-out-the-vote drive, particularly in the countryside, where the Golkar machine developed by former dictator Suharto remains strong. To fend off the challenge, Megawati will first of all need to deny Yudhoyono that kind of support.

Both sides are thus zeroing in on Golkar, whose candidate, former military chief and indicted war-crimes suspect General Wiranto, trails Megawati in the early returns 22 to 26 percent. The party has millions of members and piles of cash; while SBY has had great success enticing voters to cross party lines, he'll need a much more sizable war chest to take on the PDI-P head-to-head. In return, Golkar Chairman Akbar Tanjung, the country's current Parliament speaker, is expected to demand key cabinet posts for loyalists. Sources tell NEWSWEEK that both Yudhoyono and Megawati are already holding talks with Tanjung, who, having failed to win the Golkar nomination for president, has positioned himself as kingmaker.

Many observers think Megawati may have planned for such an eventuality; she's kept lines of communication open to Tanjung and other Golkar leaders for months. Indeed, Golkar and the PDI-P have worked together to dominate Parliament for the past five years. They successfully conspired to impeach President Abdurrahman Wahid for alleged corruption and incompetence in 2001, clearing the way for the then Vice President Megawati to succeed him. But opinion is divided about whether she or SBY would better serve Golkar's interests. Megawati can offer Golkar prized cabinet seats and the assurance of five more years of political dominance. SBY, on the other hand, can probably offer even more political posts, ...