Page 116 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

Media in Retreat 101

By mid-July, Indonesian observers began to see the prescience of Tanjung’s
remarks. On the basis of a penultimate count, the Jakarta Post projected that Golkar
would win 120 seats, with roughly two-thirds from the outer islands. PDIP would
secure 154 seats, with well over half from Java and Bali. The three putatively sexist
Muslim parties had won 125 votes, giving a possible Golkar-Muslim coalition a total
of 245 votes—a clear majority among parliament’s 462 elective seats. Combining
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this majority with Golkar’s influence over the remaining 200 appointive seats, with
or without the military’s 38 votes the ruling party was in a strong position to retain
the executive in the October selection of the president by the plenary 700-member
parliament (MPR).
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Minimizing the Fraud
Although these observations are not defi nitive, this pattern should have raised
questions for working journalists downloading up-to-the-minute tallies from comput-
ers at the election’s media headquarters in the Aryaduta Hotel. Yet in the following
weeks, the dozens of local and foreign reporters crowded four-deep to print out these
tallies failed to report the pattern. Instead, coverage cited the KPU’s explanation that
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the slow count was the result of “technical problems,” such as assiduous reporting
procedures and “poor transportation,” and relied heavily on statements from foreign
election monitors, who consistently dismissed the violations as insignifi cant.
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While news outlets publicly adopted a reassuring stance, Indonesian reporters
privately indicated concern over discrepancies in the pace of the returns. Two days
after the ballot, SCTV’s news director, Riza Primadi, noted that it seemed suspicious
that counts from opposition strongholds in Bali and Java were coming in quickly
while tallies from the outer islands were trickling in. Later, however, he dismissed
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his observation, citing the KPU explanation that poor transport and communications
had caused the slower returns. But this justification failed to explain why fraud alle-
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gations from the outer islands were also far more numerous and serious than those
reported from Java and Bali, or why four of the outer island provinces experiencing
the slowest returns were in Sulawesi, a well-developed island with relatively strong
communications and transportation.
Primadi, with other members of the media, appeared reluctant to focus on dis-
tortions. Journalists found themselves in a difficult position. In conversations at the
Aryaduta Hotel during the count, some explained their caution. Reporters from four
regional Indonesian papers were among the most nervous, stating that “it was best
not to look into evidence of cheating.” They added they “had a sense” such inves-
tigations were not what their editors wanted, and appeared relieved that little was
expected of them on this subject.
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During lunch with a Jakarta-based television crew two days after the vote, another
journalist from SCTV, Raymond Kaya, was more candid, admitting he and others
thought that the violations were possibly serious. But, he explained, they were wary of
television’s power to incite the public and preferred to downplay the cheating to avoid
sparking riots among opposition supporters that could invalidate the entire election.
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Until the end of the count, “technical problems” explained the slow returns from
outlying areas in commentary that relied on the KPU. As the count dragged on,
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media attention waned. Over a month before the final tally, the Aryaduta ballroom,
once crowded with journalists, had emptied out. At a last press conference, a lone

journalist from the Jakarta Post finally asked KPU delegates, “At what point does the