Hail to democracy

Monday's explosion at the General Elections Commission (KPU) office aside, there was not a lot of excitement to mark the announcement of the official results of the July 5 presidential election. Perhaps there were not many surprises to begin with, and certainly not enough for most people, not even the two front- runners who now go into the second round in September, to openly celebrate. The explosion, while serious and requiring thorough investigation, should not be allowed to distract us from the fact that Indonesia has completed one more stage in the exercise of electing its leaders through democratic means.

Considering that this is the first time Indonesia has held a direct presidential election, perhaps we as a nation deserve to pat ourselves on the back for a job relatively well done. It was not the perfect election that everyone would have loved to have seen, but it went off peacefully (at least until Monday) and relatively smoothly. But such is the state of the national psyche after so many crises over the past few years that we often forget or neglect to acknowledge our own hard work and achievements.

The KPU's final tally confirmed the preliminary results that it had been diligently putting out and updating almost every hour, and which the public and the media had been avidly following over these past three weeks. The final results were not so different from the those of the quick count that the National Democratic Institute and Institute of Research, Education and Information on Social and Economic Affairs (LP3ES) announced on the night of July 5. Understandably, therefore, the KPU's announcement came as something of an anticlimax for many people.

Two of the five presidential candidates -- Amien Rais and Hamzah Haz, who respectively came fourth and last -- had already thrown in the towel while the preliminary count was still in progress. Although Gen. (ret) Wiranto, who took third place in the final count, held on to his hopes for as long as he could, we know his party had already prepared itself for defeat. Golkar, which won the largest number of seats in the April general election and had nominated Wiranto for the presidency, has been engaged in talks this past week with a view to forging a coalition with one of the front-runners -- President Megawati Soekarnoputri or Lt. Gen. (ret) Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono -- ahead of the September runoff. Wiranto's demand for a recount has fallen on deaf ears, and rightly so as most people, including many in his own camp, believe that it would make little difference to the final outcome.

Naturally, as in any election, the July 5 vote was not without its share of hullabaloo and protests. There was the controversy over the double perforation of ballot papers, which was not all that dissimilar to the problems in Florida during the 2000 U.S. presidential election. Another problem emerged with Amien Rais' and Wiranto's refusal to endorse the results in a number of provinces in protest at either the electoral or counting processes employed. The Election Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu) received numerous complaints and protests, and referred some of these to the Constitutional Court for resolution.

These protests and complaints are important for the nation, and most particularly for the KPU and Panwaslu, in allowing for the development of better election mechanisms, both for the September runoff and the 2009 elections. They are footnotes, important ones at that, but they should not affect the outcome of the July election as announced by the KPU on Monday.

The KPU said the 118 million out of 155 million registered voters took part in the election, giving a voter turnout of 76 percent, a healthy figure for a relatively young democracy like Indonesia.

The level of abstentionism is indeed high if we go by the 90 percent plus turnouts during the six elections held during the Soeharto years. But let us remind ourselves that voting in this country is not obligatory. We can now leave it up to the political analysts to interpret the relatively high level of abstentionism, but the turnout is still a respectable figure -- certainly by the standards of any functioning democracy.

All in all, Indonesia's first experiment with a direct presidential election has been a remarkable success. This is especially so given that we only emerged from three decades of authoritarian rule six years ago. During those three decades, elections were simply mechanisms to endorse the reelection of Soeharto, and therefore far from democratic.

Indonesia should rejoice at its achievements. We've got ourselves past second base with this first round presidential election. Now we can all look forward to an even better election in the runoff in September as we head for home and elect the best man or woman as president.