Hail to democracy

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.