Indonesians note lessons from U.S. election

Veeramalla Anjaiah and M.Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

As the world watched with either joy or dismay as the votes were tallied following the U.S. elections -- depending on the respective audience's preferences -- Indonesians are also looking for lessons to be learned following a lengthy election year.

It ended in September with the country's first direct presidential election.

While officials of the General Election Commission (KPU), which had prepared and organized the election, admired the decentralized balloting process in the United States, an expert on elections here raised the issue of credibility.

Speaking from Washington, KPU chairman Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin said that the decentralized system of the U.S. elections would need more resources including funds.

"We have neither the technology nor the human resources to follow the American model, which is well-organized," he said during a live video conference held at the U.S. Embassy here.

Nazaruddin is leading a small delegation to Washington to observe the 2004 U.S. election, in which electronic voting machines were used on Tuesday. For Indonesia, the machines are costly and not suited to the situation here, he said.

"Each voting machine costs around US$3,000. We have around 600,000 polling stations ... and people still trust the manual election process."

Nazaruddin noted two major aspects that contributed to the election's "success": "The management skills of the elections team -- which introduced an early voting process to avoid trouble -- and the application of modern technology."

KPU team member Valina Singka Subekti added, "Even the way they recruited (highly qualified) election officials ... is worth considering. We learned a lot from the U.S. election to improve the quality of our own elections in the future."

In Jakarta, however, Smita Notosusanto of the Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro) said Wednesday that such decentralization risked the credibility of the election result.

"The absence of standardized balloting procedures nationwide has resulted in numerous cases of disenfranchised voters," Smita said.

She cited different mechanisms in selecting presidential candidates and voter registration, which at times discriminated against minorities.

"A valid vote in one state could be declared invalid in other states," the lecturer at the University of Indonesia said.

She also said that although the electoral system had matured, it was still prone to collusion at the level of the states, between the election commission, administration and candidates' campaign teams to give victory to a certain candidate.

"Collusion took place in the Florida debacle in 2000," she claimed, referring to the close race between Democratic candidate Al Gore and Republican candidate George W. Bush. The Supreme Court gave the victory to Bush.

She also offered her opinion on the U.S. electoral college system, saying it hampered the full exercise of the electorate's political right. Votes for the losing candidate are lost to the victor in the "winner-takes-all" system in the states.

Meanwhile, unlike most Asian countries, where U.S. embassies had organized "red-white-and-blue" parties to observe the election, the embassy here organized only the "U.S. Election Watch - 2004" program, in respect of the Muslim fasting month.