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Indonesia Presidential Election


Indonesia's 176m eligible voters face potential confusion in Wednesday's presidential election after a last-minute court decision to throw out the official voter roll because of complaints of missed or dead voters and double registrations.Officials said they would allow anyone with valid identity papers to cast ballots and cautioned that could cause some logistical problems as voters tried to figure out where to vote and what documents to present.

Election authorities in the world's third largest democracy dismissed concerns about having insufficient ballot papers, as they were expecting turnout of about 75 per cent, down significantly from the last presidential poll in 2004.Some voters were ecstatic at Monday's ruling by the Constitutional Court, which threw out the official voter rolls after complaints that up to 45m people might have been disenfranchised by the General Election Commission's incomplete registration programme."I wasn't able to vote in the [April] legislative election because my name was not on the list, even though I thought I registered," Bondan, a cold-drinks seller, said on Tuesday. "But now I will be able to vote. This is the real meaning of democracy, giving power to the people. I just hope they have enough ballot papers."

The sudden change is not expected to affect what most analysts anticipate will be President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's likely re-election. In April's legislative election, Mr Yudhoyono's Democrat Party won a leading 20.6 per cent of the vote. Most polls put his own popularity at several times that, thanks in part to the relatively robust state of south-east Asia's largest economy.Growth is slowing but remains above 4 per cent, while the government has mitigated the impact of the crisis through cash handouts, cheap rice and free education for the poor. Mr Yudhoyono is also seen to have been more successful than his predecessors in tackling the country's endemic corruption.To secure victory, a candidate must win 50 per cent of the nationwide vote and at least 20 per cent of the vote in at least 17 of the country's 33 provinces. If no one fulfils the criteria, the top two will participate in a run-off in September.

Most opinion polls predict Mr Yudhoyono will win a second and final five-year term without any need for the run-off. His two challengers are his predecessor, Megawati Sukarnoputri, and the current vice-president, Jusuf Kalla.Neither challenger has used the campaign to attack the incumbent, with Mrs Megawati, the daughter of Indonesia's founding father, Sukarno, declaring last week it was "not the eastern way" to launch direct attacks on a political rival.

The benign atmosphere has enabled Mr Yudhoyono to run a safe campaign around the unspectacular slogan "Continue on!"Official results will not be announced for more than a fortnight, but unofficial projections based on returns from representative samples of polling stations are expected by late afternoon Jakarta time.

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