Did they, or did they not time their bombings to coincide with the impending elections in Indonesia and Australia?

Since the Madrid train bombing in March, an event that threw out the right wing conservative government, political analysts have begun to wonder if terrorists groups have sought to alter electoral outcomes.

With elections in Afghanistan (October), the US (November) and Iraq (next January) coming in quick succession, the above question is not posed in vain.

The rise and fall of political leaders, currently engaged in the war on terror, have followed battle-field developments, homeland security and willingness to take pre-emptive actions. Terrorist bombings in any one of the five elections in the coming weeks and months could sway results, especially President Bush`s efforts to gain re-election.

In response to the car bombing in front of The Australian embassy in Jakarta, which killed nine people and wounded another 180, opinions have been swift.

Timing of attacks

Analysts at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore, Dr Rohan Gunaratna and Dr Andrew Tan Tian Huat, said they were not surprised by the act, allegedly carried out by Jemaah Islamiya (JI).

"This attack took place because the opportunity was there," said Gunaratna, the author of Inside Al-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror, a study of the international terrorist movement to which JI is closely linked.

"It wasn't because of the presidential elections in Indonesia later this month or Australia's general elections next month - it was because the circumstances were opportune."

In turn, Tan said JI's ability to carry out more attacks was indicated by the fact that of its estimated 3,000 members in Southeast Asia, between 500 and 1,000 were believed to have trained to make or plant explosives. Only 200 of its members have been arrested since the Sept 11 attacks.

In a certain sense, analysts who discount the attack of JI to coincide with the election may be right.

Terrorism, as Paul Wilkinson, an expert on counter terrorism at RAND, once affirmed, is `pure theatrics`.

It is used as a tool, a crude one, to garner the most attention to its cause; not necessarily to change the electoral outcome. The primary motivation of terrorism, for the lack of better word, is to `shock and awe.`

Even the claim that Al-Qaeda succeeded in its first `regime change` of Spain this year, has been a bit far fetched.

Many Spaniards' surprise decision to vote the Popular Party out was due to the fact that after the Madrid attack, the Aznar administration publicly blamed the tragedy on Basque separatists with no evidence to back the charge up. By election day, evidence had surfaced to clear the Basques of guilt.

Nevertheless, there is increasing evidence that terrorist attacks are more prone to happen during an election year, as the stakes are vastly increased. Indeed, the terrorist acts are carried out, not necessarily to change the electoral balance at the first instance, but to show that they still matter.

Forced to go on the run, due to the government`s offensive tactics since Sept 11, elections have held an irresistible lure for terrorists because they can make a huge impact; not withstanding the fact that some of these attacks can hurt the cause of the terrorism rather than to improve it.

Affecting elections

In turn, Professor Kevin Hewison at the City University of Hong Kong believes that the terrorist attacks are staged to 'bring in' tough leaders to make the war on terror 'real'.

For what it is worth, the use of violent elements to influence an election has a long pedigree, and it is not confined to the Islamic extremists. At different points, adversaries of the US have tried to influence its electoral outcome. As Max Boot, a leading military historian, writing in the LA Times noted:

"In 1900, American troops were embroiled in another nasty counterinsurgency halfway around the world that was not going as well as planned. After the Democratic nominee, William Jennings Bryan, promised to pull out of the Philippines, the `insurrectos` launched a fall offensive to secure his election. They failed. Republican William McKinley was re-elected, and the U.S. went on to pacify the islands."

In Israel, Colombia, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey and elsewhere, recent elections have been disrupted by strikes designed to commandeer the spotlight, to derail democracy, or to discredit or perhaps inflame a political leader.

To be sure, terrorist attacks in an election year make perfect sense. After all, the objective of terrorism is not so much to strike a blow against a particular physical target as it is to strike a psychological blow against a target audience.

As David Rothkopf, the chairman and co-founder of Intellibridge Corp wrote: "Elections heighten the stakes because a blow during an election is a blow against a society's political foundations. Elections also enable terrorists to lash out more directly at individual political figures and to do so in a highly visible way."

How would an attack affect the race? In case after case, assaults before major votes have benefitted candidates who were seen as tougher on terrorists.

In Israel in 1996, for instance, Labor Party leader Simon Peres held a 25-to-30 point lead over his Likud rival Binyamin Netanyahu. Then suicide bombings claimed more than 60 lives in four weeks. Peres was widely seen as the more conciliatory candidate, and Netanyahu won.

In 2002, when 11 Israelis died in a Jerusalem bombing, hard-liner Ariel Sharon was elected. Similarly, in Russia, Vladimir Putin's stance against Chechen terrorists was widely credited with his presidential win in 2000.

In Sri Lanka, when President Chandrika Kumaratunga, known for her tough stance against Tamil Tiger terrorists, was wounded in a pre-election attack in 2002, her flagging political fortunes were revived and she, too, won.

The Jakarta blast, for one, is likely to swing Australia's election campaign away from the bread-and-butter matters of tax and health care and back to national security.

The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, is consistently seen as a strong leader on security issues. His swift response to the explosion, his appropriate sympathy for the families of those Indonesians killed, and his government's record of effective co-operation with the Indonesian authorities after the Bali attacks are all likely to enhance this advantage.

In the context of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is a former security minister known for his tough anti-terrorism profile, also stands to gain from this bombing.

Indonesians who are deeply angered by the bombings are likely to elect him over incumbent President Megawati for the September 15 run-off election, as the latter is seen as weak on terrorism.

Not unless the terrorists` goal was to help the hard-liners, the recent bombing in Jakarta has shown how members of JI are averse to logic.

Even if they were timed to the elections, their mission to free their spiritual guru Abu Bakar Bashir has taken a step backward.

Still, the perpetrators gain just as much if Abu Bakar remains in jail, as his imprisonment could serve to rally other religious zealots to the cause. It is this very ambiguous yet ambitious pursuit of their aims that make the terrorists in Indonesia a serious scourge.