Congratulate Indonesians for successful elections

Comments on comments by Ken Ward on “Yudhoyono’s re-election: Can SBY and Indonesia up their game?” 10/07/2009, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2009/07/10/yudhoyonos-re-election-can-sby-and-indonesia-up-their-game/

I confess that I am not an expert on Indonesia and know very little about its elections.

However, I think Indonesia should be congratulated for its successful democratic elections. The transition to democracy in Indonesia has been remarkable.

Every country has its own uniqueness and that is also reflected in the different election systems and rules. For example, Australia has a compulsory election system that fines people for not doing the vote. It does not seem to be very much freedom or democratic for people in deciding to vote personally or not. Very few other countries require that.

Another undesirable feature of the Australian election system is that it is not a fixed term election. The government and the prime minister can decide on when the election is to be held. That can be abused by the incumbent to choose a date that mostly advantages it.

Further, although Australia is very democratic in terms of allowing very small parties to be elected as either senators or MPs, it does suffer from the bizarre case fairly frequently when an individual senator can ransom the whole government for the minute interest that particular person is pursuing. Is that a desirable outcome, or better than having some other rules like some of the Indonesian ones?

There should always be some balance or trade off. There is no system that always produces "good". One needs to be realistic and also rational. Of course the problem is how to define them and I admit that.

In the international arena, there should be freedom and democracy too. That is an important point to bear in mind.