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.