It still is not clear what kind of government will emerge from the elections whose results were declared recently. Some powerful Jakarta elites, unhappy with the people's choice, may manage to form a government that ignores the election. Even so, the results give a rare snapshot of the political map at the grassroots. In particular, the regional distribution of seats won by various parties helps answer the question many asked beforehand: 'Will these elections heal Indonesia's weakened body politic?' The distribution of seats has not yet been announced, but the Jakarta Post newspaper carries a detailed projection on its web site.

The first impression is encouraging for all those who had hoped for a simple result to reflect the national mind. Defying pessimists who said 48 parties would only produce chaos, the results are almost as simple as a New Order election, but with a huge swing away from Golkar towards Megawati's PDI. The three New Order parties - Golkar, PPP and PDI - between them wrapped up 72% of the seats. They each won seats in practically every province. The Big Five (the New Order three plus Abdurrahman Wahid's PKB and Amien Rais' PAN) won over 90% of all seats. Just eight parties won over 96% of them.

The swing against Golkar of 50% compared with the 1997 election was strong right across the nation. Golkar achieved its highest result in South Sulawesi, but even there it suffered a swing of 25%. PDI at 33% of the vote won half as many votes again as its nearest rival Golkar, though less than a third as many again seats because of the heavier weighting for votes outside Java. PDI, we must conclude, was the people's choice. This result does not suggest Indonesia is incapable of achieving a national mind under conditions of freedom.

However, there is a regional pattern to the distribution of seats. While Golkar took a pummeling nation-wide, the areas where Golkar obtained more than the national average of 26% of the seats are all outside the Java heartlands. In Java-Bali, Golkar obtained 17% of the seats in each province, whereas in the outer islands it was 36%. In as much as it was saved at all, Golkar's bacon was saved in the outer islands. Moreover, Golkar's votes were strongest in rural areas. Town voters, also outside Java, often protested by choosing other parties.

In the past, Golkar relied on two things to win elections: military force, and spreading the largesse among local elites. This was the first time when both were in short supply. The military mostly stood back and let this election run its course. And the economic crisis left Golkar short of the necessary generosity. The huge swing against Golkar indicates it never really won the people's heart.

The swing to PDI, with little money to throw around, suggests a rediscovered force in Indonesian electoral politics - the force of charisma. But the swing was greatest in Java, while a strong Golkar vote persisted in outer island rural areas. This is an interesting pattern, one with a long history.

Golkar's approach to politics was reminiscent of the colonial Dutch: paternalistic, non-participatory and development-oriented. It worked for both Golkar and the Dutch in the outer islands, a thinly populated frontier region of plantations and mines. Both felt nervous about the potentially explosive populism of Java. The Dutch only once came close to panicking - that was when the communist party PKI launched an uprising in Java (and West Sumatra) in 1926/27. Golkar always won below-average votes in Java.

During their brief occupation of the archipelago, only the Japanese 16th Army in Java felt compelled to swing with Java's populism by coopting Sukarno. Elsewhere the Japanese ran an entirely non-participatory regime. The revolutionary republic of the late 1940s was largely confined to Java.

The perenially strong Golkar vote in the outer islands reflects that region's frontier, 'colonial' character. In its poorer parts, much of the urban elite is dependent on employment in the civil service. In the resource-rich western part of the archipelago, other elites benefit from export industries such as cash crops, mining and forestry. These industries were not badly affected by the economic crisis that brought so much misery to the cities of Java and that brought down Suharto. Such local elites in turn played their part in ensuring a Golkar victory there.

But these areas are also wracked with 'colonial' violence. Aceh, East Timor, and Irian Jaya are outer island regions where ruling elites have lost touch with the aspirations of the people.

If the New Order appears to linger in the outer islands, the heartlands experienced a renewal in this election. A friend in Bali's Ubud described to me a 'golden, crystalline feeling' on the day. People lined up quietly for hours waiting to cast their vote. They were determined to set right the wrongs they felt had been committed under Golkar. Afterwards they felt proud of what they had done in that booth. The PDI protest vote in Bali was strong in rural as well as urban areas. Clearly democracy should consist of more than a huge protest vote, but it was an inspiring start. Most of Java, where half the country's population lives, was the same, as were parts of Sumatra.

However, the pattern of 'renewal in Java-Bali' versus 'conservatism in the outer islands' cannot be the last word on this election result. The reason is simple. Golkar can no longer be a party of hegemony in the periphery if it has lost control of the centre. This is the end of an era. Golkar might well become like Australia's National Party, a struggling rural party looking for coalition partners. However impressed local elites in the outer islands may have been by the long experience of Golkar's hegemonic powers, that is today just a memory.

We now need to think of Indonesia as a multiparty patchwork. PDI dominance extends far beyond Java into parts of Sumatra, Kalimantan and Maluku. We see the PPP emerging as a credible party in Aceh. PAN, a completely new party, is a creative and credible force in the towns of western Sumatra, as well as in Jakarta and Yogyakarta. The PKB, another new party, dominates East Java.

Golkar can't run Indonesia from a base in Sulawesi and a contested foothold elsewhere in the eastern archipelago. Not even PDI has hegemony. Politics has entered a new ball game, a shake up at least, one that moves from the city to the country, and that might bring back a salutary interest in what goes on on the ground. That's always provided Jakarta doesn't ignore the whole thing.

[This appeared in The Jakarta Post, 11 August 1999]

Gerry van Klinken, editor, 'Inside Indonesia' magazine.