Indonesia yesterday staged parliamentary elections for representatives of three separate legislative bodies at the national, provincial and district levels that were held without reports of violence but amid a good deal of confusion.
Voting began at 7am in Indonesia's easternmost Papua province and wrapped up at 1pm in this sprawling archipelago nation of more than 17,000 islands spanning three different time zones.
PHOTO: EPA
In Papua's capital of Jayapura, 3,690km northeast of Jakarta, voting was delayed at two dozen polling stations that had not received ballots or had received the wrong ballots, reported ElShinta radio.
And in neighboring West Irian Jaya, voting was reportedly delayed in at least 54 district polling booths and might need to be postponed.
Indonesia's General Elections Commission (KPU) has acknowledged that the polls might need to be postponed in some remote areas of the archipelago, but insisted the vast majority of the 585,218 polling booths nationwide were ready for voters yesterday.
From Papua to Aceh provinces, spanning the vast archipelago nation, there were no immediate reports of election-related violence.
In Aceh's capital of Banda Aceh, 1,750km northwest of Jakarta, there were no signs of the military on the streets, although security was tight at voting booths, eyewitnesses said.
Aceh has been under martial law since May 17 last year.
Initial results from main cities and the island of Java, where more than 60 percent of the nation's population reside, were expected seven hours after voting ended yesterday thanks to a computerized tally system used for the first time in Indonesia, according to the KPU's Chusnul Mariyah.
The KPU is likely to become the target of criticism for failing to handle the logistics better in this complex polling process, dubbed the world's most complex election.
For instance, the Pondok Kelapa voting booth in East Jakarta was closed at exactly 1pm local time despite having a line of at least 70 people who had not yet cast their votes.
Some 147.3 million out of an estimated 215 million Indonesians were eligible to vote in yesterday's polls, with more than 90 percent expected to have exercised their right to vote. At stake are 15,276 seats in national, provincial and district parliaments.
"What confused me was that there were so many candidates that I didn't recognize," said Wayan Wiraywan, a voter in Bali.
Indonesia is believed to be the first democratic country to attempt a three-tier general election on the same day, requiring cumbersome ballot sheets some of which are 80cm long or require two separate pages of candidate lists.
"We're expecting about 10 percent of the votes to be invalid," said Hank Valentino, senior advisor to the International Foundation for Electoral Studies (IFES), supported by the UN Development Program (UNDP) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
According to the IFES' latest opinion polls the general election is likely to bring about significant changes to Indonesia's current political power equation.
The IFES' results from a random survey of 1,250 Indonesians in March found that some 22.2 percent said Golkar was the party that best represented their aspirations compared with 11.5 percent for the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), led by incumbent President Megawati Sukarnoputri.
A whopping 30 percent of the electorate said they were still undecided a week before the polls. IFES' Valentino predicted that Golkar could win up to 30 percent of the popular vote.
The PDI-P won 33.4 percent of the popular vote in the 1999 general election, while Golkar, the political vehicle of former autocrat Suharto who was president between the years 1966 to 1998, received 22 percent.
There are 24 different political parties contesting the Monday polls for 550 seats in the national parliament.
The April 5 general election will be followed by Indonesia's first direct presidential and vice-presidential election on July 5, with a second round scheduled on September 20 if no ticket wins a clear 51 percent majority.
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