Reuters
Friday, October 8, 1999; Page A24

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Oct. 7 –– An Indonesian Muslim leader said today he will run for president, a move that could complicate the campaign of popular front-runner Megawati Sukarnoputri.

A spokeswoman for Abdurrahman Wahid, a frail and nearly blind political maverick, said he had accepted nomination to the post by two leaders of a largely Muslim seven-party bloc.

The new chief executive will be chosen Oct. 20 by the 700-member People's Consultative Assembly, Indonesia's supreme legislative body.

The nomination was quickly endorsed by Wahid's own National Awakening Party, which had previously pledged to support Megawati for the presidency, but politicians said that pre-election political intrigue is far from over.

Indeed, the largest of the seven parties in the Muslim-dominated bloc said today that it has not yet decided to back Wahid as its candidate.

"We have no candidate yet," said Hamzah Haz, chairman of the United Development Party, which holds 58 seats in the consultative assembly.

Megawati, whose Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle won the largest share of votes in parliamentary elections in June, still needs the 51 votes of Wahid's party to win the presidency.

The seven-party bloc--including Haz's faction--controls 150 votes in the consultative assembly, only three fewer than Megawati's party, the largest single faction in parliament.

Megawati was viewed as a clear favorite for the presidency after the parliamentary election, Indonesia's first democratic ballot in decades, but she has failed to exert a sense of authority on the new political landscape.

In two early tests of strength, her party's candidates lost races for the speakership of the new parliament and the consultative assembly.