Indonesians note lessons from U.S. election

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.