India to post election results on Internet

Our Asia correspondent, Harvey Stockwin, looks at the way recent Asian elections appeared, or failed to appear, on the Internet.

HONG KONG (JP): By the time of your next parliamentary and presidential elections in Indonesia, the size of the electorate will probably make Indonesia the world's second largest democracy. But while Indonesia can overtake the United States, it is most unlikely to ever overtake India, the huge nation in which every election involves numbers with which no other nation has to deal.

As voting in its latest general election gets underway, India faces an additional unseen challenge: Will it do better in the vast and ever expanding realm of cyberspace than Taiwan did recently with its presidential election, or South Korea with its National Assembly voting?

More simply, the question is whether or not India will succeed in efficiently providing news of its election -- and particularly its complex results -- for the global computerized information system called the Internet. It's a problem that Indonesia will have to worry about in 1997 and 1998.

Both Taiwan and South Korea had advantages over India. Their respective electorates are each smaller than, say, the electorate of Tamil Nadu. Their results could be announced within twelve hours of the closure of the polls. Even so, they failed to deliver on the Internet.

So far, so good, for India. A resident of outer space, comparing the way he was viewing the three elections on the Internet, would assume that Taiwan was a not-very-efficient Third World country, that South Korea was backward in the use of computers, and India was in the forefront of computer development.

This is because there was only one home page on the Internet exclusively devoted to the Taiwan presidential election, even though there was a great deal of worldwide interest. It was run by the government. At the crucial moment, with China still brandishing its military might, the government's home page broke down in delivering the all-important results of the election to the waiting global audience.

Worse than that, neither the South Korean government nor its private sector bothered to provide a host page on the Internet from which news of the general election, also taking place in the context of increased tensions on the Korean peninsula, could be speedily delivered to a curious international audience.

The electoral Internet performance of Taiwan and South Korea was so lackluster, our imaginary resident in outer space would never have guessed that both nations are to the fore producing computers and all the sophisticated software and hardware that goes with them.

To the contrary, he would assume, from its electoral Internet performance so far, that India like the United States is an advanced computerized nation. This is because, as in the US, so in India, the election coverage on the Internet is not provided by the government -- there is no need for it to do so. Private enterprise is doing the job. In India's case, it is already providing three excellent home pages, on which electoral progress is being recorded.

In the case of India, there is a catch. The real test is to come. The protracted vote-counting exercise only starts on May 8. Then and subsequently, thousands of Overseas Indians and thousands of foreigners interested in India are all liable to be trying to get the results as soon as they come in.

At that point, greater strain is placed on the computerized system which may have done well coping with the lesser demand for information during the election campaign. Efficient deployment of both hardware and software is required in order to withstand that strain.

This was the point at which Taiwan failed.

The Taiwan electoral coverage for the Internet was never particularly good. More than anything else it was a reminder that while democracy advances on the island, freedom of expression and freedom of information are still far from being fully achieved.

As far as this reporter could discover, using the usual Internet search mechanisms such as Netscape, Alta Vista, Yahoo, and Magellan, none of the Taiwanese firms manufacturing computers had the imagination to advertise itself on the Internet by promoting, and reporting, the presidential and the simultaneous National Assembly election.

One or two Taiwanese newspapers have home pages on the Internet, but they all seem to labor under the illusion that the only people interested in their election were those capable of reading Chinese.

So the Republic of China's Government Information Office (GIO) on Taiwan stepped into the vacuum. Pre-election coverage for the Internet was often useful though somewhat desultory (http://www.gio.gov.tw). This lackluster performance was surprising since the head of the GIO, Jason Hu, was himself running for election to the National Assembly.

But the big project from the GIO was "Vote Counting Live!!"

This promised to progressively report the votes as they were counted on a home page replete with the photographs of all the presidential candidates and their running mates. All you would have to do was click on the "Reload" button and you would receive a further updated voter count.

"Vote Counting Live!!" never delivered on its promise for a very basic reason: it was virtually impossible to get through to the home page in the first place, either during the count or for at least twelve hours afterwards. This reporter tried from several directions, and through several providers, but all the efforts ended in frustration.

The most likely reason for the blockage was that the computer providing the results for the Internet simply did not have the capacity or the technology to meet the intense demand. Probably the Taiwanese followed the East Asian habit, and used their own provider rather than importing an American one.

But the Americans are way ahead in this particular technology so this was one time when the Taiwanese should have bought American. It was, after all, the first free presidential election in Chinese history. Tens of thousands of Chinese wanted to see history happen even if they were far away. In southern China, many Chinese get onto Internet by first dialing Hong Kong. Like me, they ended up being frustrated. On the Internet the first ever Chinese presidential ended up as a fiasco.

Nearly 24 hours later, with the election result already long announced in Taipei, when I finally did get through to "Vote Count Live!!" it was to find rows of zeros where the final vote count should have been.

Over a month later, the Government Information Office Home Page still does not contain the results of the National Assembly election -- even though its boss, Mr. Hu, was one of those who got elected.

Taiwan tried and failed but South Korea, in relation to its general election, did not try at all.

Again none of the huge Korean conglomerates, or chaebols, which are busy exporting computers all over the world, thought in terms of advertising through the export of information about the election. Unlike Taiwan, the Korean government did not step into the breach.

This was strange, since the Korean Overseas Information Service (KOIS), which staffs all Korean embassies with press attaches, is a ready-to-hand information provider. KOIS invites you to view "the past, present and future of Korea" at its Korea Window on the Internet (http://www.kois.go.kr).

Korea Window aims to provide a "better understanding of what's happening on this peninsula". It contains a special section on Korea's quest to host the soccer World Cup in the year 2002, and another on an Internet Exposition in Seoul. But there was no special section on the 1996 National Assembly election.

The trouble was probably another East Asia habit common to Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China -- an inability to properly distinguish between providing information and pushing propaganda. For KOIS, winning the right to host the 2002 World Cup will be a glorious achievement, whereas the ruling New Korea Party losing its majority in the National Assembly was embarrassing.

Taiwan and Korea electorally failed on the Internet but India is all set to succeed. The government is nowhere -- if it has an election home page on the World Wide Web, then I have not been able to find it. The Election Commission is presumably too busy servicing 590 million voters to worry about servicing millions more on Internet.

First, there is Webindia's "The Landmark Indian Election of 1996" reachable at http://elections.webindia.com/ibishome.html. It has been set up particularly for those worried how the election may affect the future course of India's economic reforms.

Second, there is IndiaConnects "Indian 1996 Elections" at http://www.indiaconnect.com/election.htm.

Third, there is the joint effort of Indiaworld and the Indian Express newspaper which can be reached through http://express.indiaworld.com -- and then clicking on the hypertext for the election special page.

In different ways, all three home pages have so far provided interesting background on the election, and all three were quick to pre-report the first day's voting on April 27.

But providing the detailed statistics of what is likely to be a highly complex hung parliament will not be easy.

It is sufficient to note that none of the three home pages has yet been able to provide the precise breakdown of the last Lok Sabha at the moment it was dissolved.

Instead, Indiaconnect repeated the results of the 1991 election. Webindia gave the party breakdown of the Lok Sabha as of May 29, 1994. Indiaworld provided the party position as of Jan. 31, 1996.

All three will have to do better than that if they are to meet India's unseen challenge in the protracted vote-counting process which begins on May 8.

Whatever happens, Indonesia, for its own future benefit, should learn from the process.

Window A: Taiwan and Korea electorally failed on the Internet but India is all set to succeed.

Window B: Whatever happens, Indonesia, for its own future benefit, should learn from the process.