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