Today's Indonesian parliamentary elections are a crucial test of President Megawati Sukarnoputri's bid to continue leading the world's most populous Muslim country for the next five years.

　　The vote for the 550-seat national assembly will set the stage for the country's first direct presidential elections on July 5, and latest polls indicate that Megawati is trailing behind her former security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, in the race for the top job.

　　In contrast to the heady days of 1999, when the nation of 210 million people participated in its first free election following the ouster of longtime dictator Suharto, apathy appears to have set in among the majority poor who feel they've been shortchanged in the new, democratic Indonesia.

　　"I don't care who runs this country. They're all the same to me," said 50-year-old Kotima, who lives in a slum in central Jakarta.

　　Still, turnout among the 147 million eligible voters is predicted to be high despite dissatisfaction with mainstream parties and their failure to offer coherent programs to tackle economic reforms, unemployment and corruption.

　　Official results are to be announced by April 28, although the General Election Commission promised yesterday to have the first numbers from the country's largest cities by tonight.

　　More remote areas should take much longer, with the commission acknowledging that voting in large parts of Papua and West Irian Jaya could be delayed by as much as five days because of a failure to deliver election materials on time.

　　The Golkar Party - Suharto's former political machine - is expected to win the most seats, eclipsing Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle. That would be an astounding feat for a party identified with human rights abuses and graft during the Suharto era.

　　Yet many Indonesians are nostalgic for the relative prosperity of Suharto's 32-year reign, even though Golkar today claims to have embraced democracy.

　　"The public seems to be differentiating between social economic improvements and authoritarianism," said Kevin Evans, an electoral adviser to the UN Development Program.

　　"They are looking for political stability and re-ignition of economic growth."

　　(The Associated Press)