The election: So far, so good

The election: So far, so good

Glitches here and there notwithstanding, most observers seem
to agree that, overall, Indonesia's first direct presidential
election on Monday proceeded smoothly and successfully, in the
sense that balloting was orderly and peacefully in by and large
the great majority of the country's 570,000 polling stations. Not
one single election-related death and no violence worth speaking
of has so far been reported, although in Nangroe Aceh Darussalam,
the country's troubled westernmost province, sporadic gunfights
and voter intimidation by insurgents were reported to have
occurred on a small scale.

Violations were also reported to have occurred in Jakarta,
where election officials handed over three underage girls to
police for allegedly trying to vote using fake ID cards. A
Central Jakarta Election Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu)
official told reporters that his organization suspected that 200
people had tried to cast their votes using fake ID cards. The
authorities are at present investigating these cases. Minor
offenses were also reported to have occurred in various other
places across the country. And, of course, there were the many
complaints about the inferior quality of the ink used to mark the
fingers of voters who had cast their ballots, and more complaints
about ballot papers not arriving on time due to bad weather in
some of the more remote areas of this vast archipelago. By and
large, though, complaints and violations such as these did little
to offset the success of the balloting process.

Unlike in the old days under President Soeharto's New Order
regime, when voting was practically mandatory, citizens under the
democratic system currently in vogue cannot be forced to vote.
So, local election officials in various places have taken it upon
themselves to innovate in order to lure voters to the polling
booths. In one village in East Java, election officials together
with local people managed to collect a number of goats to be
presented as door prizes to voters with winning numbers. In yet
another village polling station, the door prize was a Honda
motorcycle.

Still other localities dressed up their polling booths with
the ceremonial paraphernalia commonly used in traditional
festivities, complete with election officials dressed in
traditional attire. For once, at least in this sense, the
presidential election could rightly be referred to as "democratic
fiesta." To many Indonesians, however, the most encouraging
aspect of Monday's presidential election has no doubt been the
fact that the Indonesian electorate has turned out to be a good
deal more intelligent and discriminating than many observers had
initially expected, or feared.

As of yesterday afternoon, the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and
Jusuf Kalla ticket was leading the race with 33.1 percent of the
votes counted, with the Megawati Soekarnoputri-Hasyim Muzadi and
Wiranto-Solahuddin Wahid pairings trailing with 26.4 percent and
23.2 percent respectively. Amien Rais and Siswono Yudohusodo
followed with 13.7 percent. The Hamzah Haz-Agum Gumelar ticket
was doing poorly with only 3.3 percent of the votes counted. What
is most important here, however, is not so much the placings of
the candidates as the rationale behind these placings.

Whatever qualities one can or cannot ascribe to the
presidential candidates, voters were clearly looking for
perceived leadership qualities in their leaders. There is clearly
an air of optimism in the air following Monday's peaceful
presidential election. Let us hope that this optimism will prove
to be justified over the next five years.