Happy Voting, Indonesia

Happy Voting, Indonesia!

Mini - me and I voted :)

Wednesday, April 17, 2019, is THE ELECTION DAY in all over Indonesia. 
This is indeed a great time for us, Indonesian, when once in 5 years, all the eligible Indonesian voters will be voting at one's designated areas according to the prepared list.

Imagine this!
Indonesia, the largest archipelagic state and an island country comprises more than 17 thousand islands, with the area stretching from Sabang to Merauke, the western most part to the eastern most part. Covering the area almost three times of Texas and more thank 5000 km coastline, conducting direct genera election at the same time all over the country indeed requires extra hard and meticulous works. From logistic point of view, distribution can be enormously challenging. To make it even more sophisticated,- or rather complicated, this time we do vote not only for the President and the Vice President, but also for representatives or members of Parliament at national, provincial, and city/municipality level (for those taking the vote in the cities or municipalities), as well as members of Dewan Perwakilan Daerah or Regional Representative Council.

Well, Election Day in my country Indonesia has always been colourful and exciting.
At least for me and my family.
As you have probably heard before we had started to have direct election since 2009 and for this year, we have around 190 millions eligible voters.

Such a huge number!

In addition to that, we had around 8 months of gruelling campaign period in all over Indonesia and it has been quite an experience. Be it on the ground as well as on social media, we saw not only the missions and visions of the candidates, but also horrible hoaxes and misinformation here and there. Well, you know crazy , dirty politics!

But what I am happy and proud is that this HUGE democracy party is conducted smoothly. 
Well, we have some glitches here and there obviously but the fact that almost all were conducted as planned. 
Again, imagine this... managing consecutive direct election (we are voting for President and Vice President, parliamentarian at central government as well as provincial and city levels at the same time) with 190 million voters. You know know how much is the   turnout voters?  It was around 80% of 190 million eligible voters! 
The votes were conducted in 34 provinces, 514 cities/municipalities, and more that 7000 villages, in area comprising more than 17.000 islands.
You can see the magnitude of the whole process, which is indeed not that simple, way from piece of cake. 

Therefore, we salute our General Election Commission  as well as all relevant institutions for managing this process through hard worm  and we are now waiting for the real count! 

The quick count shows that our beloved president, Bapak Joko Widodo, will likely be our president again! 

On that special day, my hubby and I went to our voting booth at 7 AM in the morning.

Yup... early morning for sure, 7 AM indeed!
It was basically the same time as our commuting time so we managed to get up early and get prepared.

We know it might be a long line as one Tempat Pemungutan Suara (TPS) or the Voting Booth   could accommodate up to 200 voters,  so we thought the earlier we came, the better.
We took our motorcycle there as we simply didn't want to have issues with parking.
After around 5 minutes ride,- the road was unsurprisingly almost empty,- we arrived at TPS 5, the place assigned for us. 

I voted!

When we arrived there, the local committee was not ready yet. They were still having sort of a final briefing. We could see the booths were set and the voting sheets were neatly arranged, ready to be distributed to voters. Securities were present, as well as members of the Committee and the witnesses. Once they were ready, we submitted the original C6 form (the formal registration form) as well as our original KTP  - Kartu Tanda Penduduk or ID card. Then they started to call your name to sign the attendance list and to receive the voting sheets. We received 4 different colour-coded voting sheets, for President and Vice President; members of the Parliament at central as well as provincial level and DPD).  After making sure that all the sheets were original and untempered, we headed to the booth to vote. And once we're done, we put the voted sheets to designated boxes. 
And less than 20 minutes, we were done!
WE VOTED!

I know what I wanted to vote. And again I am super happy that I got the chance to realise my civic rights by expressing my choice for the future leader of Indonesia.
We sincerely hope that Indonesia will get the best leader supported by all the peoples and all the elements of the communities.

Happy voting, Indonesia!
And may the future leader of Indonesia is the best one!