Change and Hope! It's Election Season!

Traffic in Jakarta used to be bad. Bad just got worse. The streets are even more congested with the presidential election coming in the first full week of April. The last election was in 2004. This year there will be an election on April 9th to elect both the President and Vice President for the next five years. The streets aren’t only filled with people and political rallies, but are also covered in signs and posters like the ones pictured here.

Eighteen people are running in this year’s presidential election. Two of them are women and a few of them are former presidents and vice presidents. However, presidents are limited to two 5 year terms. In pre-election polls, current Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono received 43% of the votes and former Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnoputri received 19%. Those two candidates are the favorites. None of the remaining 16 candidates received more than 5% in the polls. So although many candidates are allowed to run, it’s still a race primarily between two candidates.

Part of the reason there are so many candidates running for president is because there are 44 political parties in Indonesia. Parties supporting communism, socialism and democracy are all running in this election. Here is a shortlist of some of the contenders and pretenders: National Awakening Party (Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa), National Mandate Party (Partai Amanat Nasional), Crescent Star Party (Partai Bulan Bintang), Prosperous Peace Party (Partai Damai Sejahtera), People's Conscience Party (Partai Hati Nurani Rakyat, Partai Hanura).

Luckily, Austin and I will miss the election chaos because we will be flying to Malaysia for his birthday weekend!