Indonesian legislative election, 1997

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29 May 1997

1999 →

425 seats of the People's Representative Council

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Harmoko	Ismail Hassan Metareum	Suryadi
Party	Golkar	PPP	PDI
Last election	282 seats, 68.10%	62 seats, 17.00%	56 seats, 14.89%
Seats won	325	89	11
Seat change	43	27	45
Popular vote	84,187,907	25,341,028	3,463,226
Percentage	74.51%	22.43%	3.07%
Swing	6.41%	5.43%	11.82%

MPR & DPR leadership before election

Harmoko
Golkar

New MPR & DPR leadership

Harmoko
Golkar

Legislative elections were held in Indonesia on 29 May 1997. There were actually three elections in one as voters were electing members of two levels of regional government as well as the House of Representatives. This was to be the last election of President Suharto's New Order regime, which collapsed a year later. Like the preceding New Order elections, it was won outright by the Golkar organization.

Indonesian law at the time only allowed three organisations to participate in elections - the United Development Party (PPP), the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) and Golkar (functional group), an organisation which started off as a confederation of NGOs, and was officially not a party.

The 27-day campaign ran from April 27 to May 23, with a quiet period of five days before polling day.

The mass media tended to favour "a particular election participant" (Kristiadi et al., p84), for example Suara Karya newspaper only reported on Golkar campaign activities, and did not mention the PDI or PPP campaigns at all. On the other hand, the daily Media Indonesia was rather more balanced, but overall, Golkar campaign speakers received far more coverage.

In the later stages of the campaign, media coverage was dominated by reports of campaign violence. Suara Karya in particular reported three times as many violent incidents involving the PPP than any other paper.

Not a single election participant started the campaign by announcing or focusing on its main themes, therefore the public really had no idea what they were offering. The campaign was dominated by "sloganistic issues" with very little substance (Kristiadi et al. p82). For example, all three election participants promised to address problems such as poverty and corruption, but none actually said how they would do this. In fact, Kristiadi says that the only difference between this campaign and the previous one in 1992 was that there was less use of verses from the Koran to try and attract support.

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Wikipedia