Year-end Special Edition

Three elections made 2004 the year of elections here -- no doubt about that. The legislative election on April 5 saw nearly 150 million Indonesians choose 550 members of the House of Representatives and 128 members of the newly established Regional Representatives Council.

Then there were two rounds of direct presidential elections on July 5 and Sept. 20, the first ever in the country's history. And most of all, those elections took place in a relatively peaceful manner.

The successful elections have allowed Indonesia to claim itself the third largest democracy in the world after India and the United States.

But democracy does not necessarily bring security and welfare to the people.

Security remained the main agenda in 2004, as it has in other years since Soeharto stepped down in 1998. Terror attacks continued, with the latest targeting the Australian Embassy in September. Sporadic sectarian violence continued to plague Central Sulawesi, although it has not erupted into the sort of massive and prolonged clashes between Muslims and Christians that left thousands of people killed between 1999 and 2001 there.

Separatist movements and the government's countermoves in Aceh and Papua have also meant peace continues to elude people in both of those provinces. The government downgraded martial law in Aceh into a state of civil emergency, but on the ground, armed conflict has gone on unabated. Thousands are still stranded in refugee camps in Aceh.

This suffering was compounded on Sunday, when the third most powerful earthquake in the recorded history of the world (8.9 on the Richter Scale), followed by massive tidal waves, destroyed and inundated many coastal areas of Aceh, killing thousands, although the death toll is expected to rise dramatically in the coming days.

Disasters and calamities, though, are not the monopoly of the country's westernmost province. Earthquakes have devastated many other parts of the country, the two latest being in Alor, East Nusa Tenggara, and Nabire, Papua.

In addition to those natural disasters, the nation still saw plenty of other accidents, killing dozens of people on the roads, rails and in the air.

Surprisingly, there has been little bad news about flooding in Jakarta this rainy season, which has become an annual catastrophe for those living in this capital city. In the absence of major flooding so far, the poor continued to suffer as the Jakarta administration upped measures to evict them from slum areas.

Unemployment also remains high, with new job seekers flooding the job market, at a rate much higher than the growth of job openings.

This, despite a rosy economic picture on most other fronts: decent economic growth of over 4 percent, low inflation, low interest rates and a vibrant stock market. One major blow, however, has been the weakening rupiah, which defied the trend of other regional currencies. Those have strengthened against the U.S. dollar.

In this special year-end edition, we are presenting our analysis of various events in the country over the year 2004 with expert views on what the year 2005 will look like.

It is our hope that the economy will continue to perform and democracy will continue to blossom next year.

Year-end schedule:

Monday Dec. 27 : National and City Tuesday Dec. 28 : Business and World Wednesday Dec. 29: Features and Sports Thursday Dec. 30 : Outlook 2004 Friday Dec. 31 : Outlook 2004