JAKARTA, Indonesia - Soldiers, religious leaders, businessmen and heirs to political dynasties are among major candidates campaigning for Indonesian elections next month, but one key democratic element is missing: the left.

As the country gears up for its second free ballot since the fall of ex-dictator Suharto in 1998, the political elite is refusing to abandon the strongman's ban on the Communist Party and other left-wing groups.

"There is no place for ideological conflict in Indonesia," declared Justice Minister Yusril Mahendra, who heads the Islam-based Crescent Star Party.

"Communism is not relevant to our situation here," said Mahendra, an outspoken advocate of the ban on Marxism and Leninism.

The prohibition was introduced by General Suharto in 1966 when he seized power from Indonesia's first president, Sukarno, after accusing him of involvement in a never-explained military mutiny in which several top generals were killed.

Suharto claimed the killings were part of a communist coup attempt and unleashed the military in a wholesale slaughter of leftists, trade unionists and other political opponents of his dictatorship. The Communist Party was annihilated and at least 500,000 people died in what the CIA described as "one of the worst massacres in human history."

The continuing ban, which in practice extends to all left-wing parties and trade unions, illustrates how Indonesia's bloody past has hampered the development of democracy and highlights the lingering influence of groups that formed the dictatorship's main pillars - such as Suharto's Golkar Party and the military leadership.

"It shows how entrenched their power and interests still are," said Dede Oetomo, a professor at Airlangga University in Surabaya.

Last month, Indonesia's Supreme Court ruled former "communists" could stand for election, starting in 2009, and restored civil rights to tens of thousands of former political prisoners. But the ban against the party and its ideology remains in force.

The ban has had the unintended effect of strengthening Muslim radicalism among impoverished Indonesians angry over the country's endemic corruption and the dramatic contrast in living standards between the poor and the political, military and religious elites.

Unable to vent their frustrations through left-wing alternatives, some have flocked to religious extremists - including militant groups such as the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah network. In fact, the main hotspots of religious radicalism in Indonesia, such the city of Solo in central Java, used to be Communist Party strongholds before the massacres of the mid-'60s.

The killing of up to 40,000 of Indonesia's 90,000 schoolteachers as part of those purges left an education vacuum that was quickly filled by radicalized Islamic schools and preachers.

At the time, anti-communist fervor in the US was at its height, and Washington supplied Indonesian generals with thousands of names of known leftists and trade unionists. Most were arrested and executed by troops, historians say.

All this changed after Suharto's overthrow six years ago, when communist books and T-shirts began appearing throughout the country. Indonesia's first freely elected president, Abdurrahman Wahid, appealed to the legislature to rescind the ban on communism, describing it as antidemocratic.

But a backlash from Muslim radicals immediately followed, supported by Golkar and the military. Frightened by threats of violence from army-backed militia gangs, stores quietly withdrew their books on Marxism-Leninism.

Last year, Wahid's successor, President Megawati Sukarnoputri, again sought to legalize the party, but the country's highest legislative body rejected the proposal because the communists - as atheists - did not subscribe to Indonesia's state doctrine which mandates belief in God.

"We must restore political rights to former PKI (Communist Party) members and their families, but there is no need to legalize the party itself," Amien Rais, the legislature's speaker, told The Associated Press. Political analysts say communist ideology does not have a significant following in Indonesia, and it's difficult to gauge how much support a secular, left-wing party would get.

Still, in the parliamentary elections set for April 5, the political choices are limited to religious, nationalist and conservative parties.

"Since the banning of the PKI, there has been no political party with a leftist platform. Today's political parties are only interested in making money," said Martin Aleida, a retired journalist who spent a year in jail during the dictatorship.

And in a throwback to Suharto's reign, military intelligence agents in central Indonesia have resumed vetting the candidates, disqualifying some from running because of their alleged association with "subversive" groups.

Explains Aleida: "They are preventing people from having their choice, and until this is changed you cannot say Indonesia is a democratic country."

(Agencies via Xinhua)