My personal experience in working on the election

My personal experience in working on the election

Jardine "Dinia" Wall, Los Angeles

After its first round of direct presidential elections in
July, Indonesian democracy is toughened, but not battle-weary.
The Indonesian people have taken the opportunity given to them by
failing authoritarianism to transform their society into a
democracy. The daunting logistics were entrusted to the KPU (the
General Elections Commission), which had only two years to
prepare for the most complex national elections in the world.

I arrived in Jakarta to volunteer at the KPU in June, the
month of mandated campaigning before the primary. As a blonde,
American college student, I was inexperienced and
inconsequential, but highly visible. The first few weeks I was
quoted, as a "foreign journalist," in a local paper and even
rumored to be a mata-mata (spy).

On my last day of work, my Indonesian co-worker and I were
bent over the KPU Help Desk's pristine computer monitors,
digesting July's election data, when a loud blast echoed through
the building. My friend was altogether unfazed and uninterested,
continuing to type up her report, but I grabbed my hand phone,
ready to bolt. Having studied the electoral process in Indonesia,
I shared the KPU's pride in the primary's efficiency, but I
hadn't forgotten the country's history of election-related
violence.

In fact, the explosion was a bomb -- small, but requiring
evacuation. To me, it was a reminder of what foreigners, and
perhaps many Indonesians, expect during an election period here.
In contrast to those expectations, I had witnessed a peaceful and
fair plebiscite, enabled by impressive technology -- something I
wish were true in the state of Florida.

The director of the KPU Information Technology Department, Ibu
Chusnul Mari'yah, took on the mammoth task of administering the
first electronic vote tabulation. The KPU's goal was to publicly
report the preliminary results of the 2004 elections a day after
polls closed. Chusnul recognized that the speed, transparency and
accuracy of electronic tabulation would help prevent the
inefficiencies of previous Indonesian elections, and reduce the
opportunity for manipulation and corruption.

With the help of five Indonesian IT experts and fifty student
volunteers from elite universities across Indonesia, Chusnul
administered the distribution of 8,000 CPUs and printers to 440
regional KPU offices. This network of regional offices would
provide high-speed, verifiable vote tabulation to parallel the
traditional manual count. On more than one occasion, the IT team
had to deal with problems such as equipment mysteriously
disappearing and turning up in the local Regent's private office.

The IT Department then set up a cost-efficient chain-
instruction system to train regional officers (called the "cell
system"). In several regions, this process was complicated by the
fact that the operators' only experience with word processing was
on ancient typewriters. Despite these difficulties, more than
5,000 operators completed training in less than two weeks.

Surprisingly, this monumental accomplishment has elicited
little coverage or support in the media. The local press has
vilified Chusnul personally for decisions taken by the KPU's
nine-member council. One reporter even referred to her as "Public
Enemy Number 1." Perhaps she personifies the dual threat of
feminism and technology. In my experience, Chusnul's liability
was her aggressive optimism that Indonesia was ready to lead the
way in election reform and able to use the finest technology
available.

"It is important to note that Chusnul did not shrink or
collapse under the pressure, but instead stood her ground on the
basis of the facts," says political observer Jeffrey Winters. "In
her own courageous struggles, Chusnul has taken a step forward
for women, showing they can endure a political hurricane and
remain standing."

Chusnul's perseverance, as well as her distrust of the press,
evolved during her tenure as head of the Political Science
Department at the University of Indonesia. The first Indonesian
woman to receive a PhD in Political Science, Chusnul repeatedly
found her authority threatened by the male academic
establishment.

Bringing her relentless drive and visionary defiance to the
KPU, Chusnul has been accused of "setting the bar too high" for
the IT projects. Many say she created unreasonable expectations
in a pre-election press conference last April, claiming votes
would be counted in a matter of hours. In fact, tabulation took
several days -- still, a huge improvement on past efforts and
other Asian plebiscites.

Paul Rowland, project director of the National Democratic
Institute, an independent elections monitor in Indonesia since
1996, explained the KPU's resulting image problem this way, "What
should have been a laudable effort was then seen as a failure. No
one expected perfect elections. Elections here are too big to
expect immediate results."

A technically complex problem, administered by an assertive
female, would be a public relations challenge in most societies.
But I feel the KPU's uncomfortable relationship with the media
reflects deeper issues. Local press may be influenced by local
power brokers who do not see increased transparency as
advantageous. And the KPU's dismissive treatment of the press may
reflect traditional society's cultural antipathy to checks and
balances. However, when the press is denied legitimate
participation, what remains is only sensationalism and scandal
mongering.

An adversarial press is critical to a healthy democracy, as
has become evident in the U.S. since the events of Sept. 11,
2001. In the sensitive, emergency atmosphere created by
terrorism, the American press suspended their usually aggressive
inquiry into presidential actions.

Many observers now question whether American involvement in
Iraq would be the way it is today if the press had appropriately
examined and challenged the Bush administration's claims. If the
KPU could learn from this American failure to accept the integral
role of the press in their democracy, the resulting coverage
would likely be less counterproductive.

The writer is an undergraduate student at Columbia University
in New York City, who worked as a volunteer with the KPU in
Jakarta. He can be reached at ajw2109@columbia.edu