Page 111 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

96 Chapter 5

significantly faster rate of early returns from PDIP strongholds compared to those
from remote provinces where Golkar was leading. In its stronghold Yogyakarta,
PDIP held a substantial 23 percent lead over Golkar on June 10, with 32 percent of
total votes counted. That same day, in the Golkar-dominated South Sulawesi, whose
twenty-four seats were weighted heavily, at 176,000 voters each, returns were trick-
ling in with only 6 percent tallied. Significantly, though South Sulawesi was Habibie’s
home province, Golkar and PDIP were in a dead heat, with 19 percent each. Four
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days later, when excitement over PDIP’s early showing had faded, South Sulawesi’s
unlikely neck-and-neck race of June 10 had disappeared, leaving Golkar with an over-
whelming 75 percent of the vote versus only 10 percent for PDIP.
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Maps and tables downloaded at the KPU’s media headquarters in Jakarta on the seventh day of the
count, June 14, 1999, showed a telling pattern indicating that the Golkar machine was withholding votes
to allow a late-hour infl ation of the party’s returns. In the opposition district of Yogyakarta, where the
insurgent PDIP had won 42 percent of the total, the numbers were pouring in, rising fast from a range
of 42–78 percent tallied at 6:02 p.m. (map on left) to an overall 78.64 percent by 7:30 p.m. (table 2). By
contrast, in South Sulawesi (map on right), where the ruling Golkar party was winning 75 percent of the
total, by 11:25 p.m. on June 14, only 31 percent of the votes had been reported.