Surprise gains for Islamic parties in Indonesia election

The enormously popular leader of Indonesia’s political opposition fared worse than expected in parliamentary elections Wednesday, and Islamic parties scored surprising gains in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, despite analysts’ expectations that they were losing their appeal because of recent graft scandals.

The main opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) had been expected to easily win enough votes to nominate popular Jakarta Gov. Joko Widodo, affectionately known as Jokowi, as its candidate in the upcoming presidential election.

Opinion polls have indicated that Widodo could easily win the July 9 presidential vote. Widodo, a former furniture producer, is a newcomer to national politics and is adored by legions of supporters who favor his simple style, humble background and willingness to reach out to the poor in Indonesia, which is Southeast Asia’s largest economy and has experienced breakneck growth and development in the past few years.

Early quick counts on Wednesday, however, suggested Widodo's PDI-P might not win enough votes to nominate him without forming a coalition with one or more of the 11 other parties contesting the parliamentary vote.

"Parliament is likely to be very fragmented because many parties have gotten a relatively big share of votes," said Philips Vermonte, political analyst at the Jakarta-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

"This will have a big influence on the new president, because he'll have to pay attention to the situation in parliament and the many political players there," Vermonte said.

The party needs 25 percent of the national vote, or 20 percent of seats in parliament, to nominate Widodo on its own. After 80 percent of vote results were compiled by CSIS from 2,000 polling booths across the world's third-largest democracy, PDI-P had 19 percent of the national vote.

Official results will be announced next month, but the early counts are generally considered reliable indicators of winners.

The quick count showed that the five Islamic parties had won 32 percent of the vote, up from 29 percent for eight such parties contesting the 2009 election.

Indonesia has about 500,000 polling stations and more than 186 million registered voters.

The resource-rich country's embrace of democracy since the downfall of former authoritarian leader Suharto 16 years ago has seen four different presidents and repeated change of the leading party.

Coming in second to the PDI-P was Golkar, onetime parliamentary vehicle of the long-serving Suharto, with 15 percent of the vote.

Early results suggest both parties will struggle to meet the threshold to contest the presidency, suggesting there will be intense horse trading to form coalitions.

Backing for the ruling Democratic Party of outgoing President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has fallen to single digits after it was hit by a series of high-profile graft cases last year. Yudhoyono is limited by the constitution to two terms. He is Indonesia's first leader to be chosen by direct election.

"Even though we are still fixing and perfecting the system of holding these [elections], once again Indonesia can be grateful because our democratic journey is going the right way," Yudhoyono told reporters.

Voters, nearly a third of them under the age of 30, chose between 6,600 candidates vying for national parliament seats. Elections were also held for 19,007 provincial and district legislative assembly seats.

Most Indonesians view parliament as among their country's most corrupt institutions, according to a 2013 Transparency International survey. Under the presidential system, however, the executive branch has the authority to overrule it.

About 75 percent of voters went to the polls, up from 70 percent in the 2009 elections, according to the CSIS. Voter apathy has been a concern in a country plagued by cronyism and corruption, but analysts credited the so-called Jokowi effect with helping to energize voters.

Al Jazeera and wire services