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Media in Retreat 95

ballot boxes opened before they began counting. In another regency with only 30,028
registered voters, workers reported receiving 160,000 ballots. Similarly, reports from
West Nusa Tenggara implicated government officials, assumed to be Golkar members,
in vote-tampering schemes.
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Before the election, there were numerous signs of embezzlement, providing clues
to much of the election fraud’s funding. In May 1999, evidence surfaced that nearly half
of the Rp17.9 trillion ($256 million) that the World Bank had provided for Indonesia’s
Social Safety Net program had been “misappropriated.” Election monitoring groups
reported that some of this money had gone to Golkar campaigning in the outer islands.
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The same month, observers had estimated that Golkar’s campaign would spend at least
one billion rupiah ($116,000) per electoral district—nearly $35 million nationwide.
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Despite clear indications that much of the money was obtained illegitimately, few ques-
tioned how party officials could accumulate such vast sums during an economic crisis.

Media Dilemmas
Before and after the vote, the media devoted little space to these reports. Their
dilemma was now that reporting fraud risked discrediting the electoral process and
derailing the transition; remaining silent risked undermining the transition less per-
ceptibly by allowing the perpetuation of engineered outcomes.
Biases in media ownership also discouraged critical coverage, particularly within
television stations owned by Suharto supporters, where staff complained of strong
pressure to favor Golkar. Yet as the nation began the long process of ballot counting,
the historic nature of these events imposed caution on everyone involved, particularly
news outlets. For the first time in decades, Golkar was not heading to another land-
slide victory. Early returns showed the once-entrenched ruling party trailing PDIP by
double digits, suggesting that even if Golkar was subverting the process to stay in
power, the strategy was failing.
62
This outcome, regardless of fraud, seemed synonymous with democratization’s
triumph, making irregularities appear inconsequential. For the first time but not the
last, a desirable outcome was equated with the advancement of democratization. Yet
Golkar was not failing in its bid to retain power. There was another, less visible dimen-
sion to the story ignored by all but a few journalists—the party’s implementation of
the second-place strategy of “winning by losing.”
As international observers declared the elections free and fair, two little-noticed
trends signaled Golkar’s implementation of such a strategy. Advantages that the party
had secured in the earlier rule writing grew more apparent—specifically, those allocat-
ing more seats per registered voter to outer island provinces (one per 172,750 voters)
where Golkar support was stronger than to opposition bailiwicks on Java and Bali
(one per 203,917 voters).
63
After the vote, returns from the outer provinces were coming in far more slowly than
from Java and Bali—an apparent use of the machine strategy of withholding votes until the
minimum number necessary for victory becomes clear. By June 10, with just 16 percent
64
of votes tallied nationwide, Megawati’s PDIP was winning 44 percent of votes cast for the
five largest parties in the six most populous provinces on Java and Bali, building a wide lead
over Golkar’s 12 percent (see table 1 ). By contrast, in five outer-island provinces—
three on Sulawesi—Golkar was winning an average of 45 percent to PDIP’s 32 percent.
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Golkar’s lopsided showing in these five provinces was not necessarily remark-
able, given the party’s strength and overall organization. More noteworthy was the