Duty to the country

Indonesia will be holding its 5-yearly election on 9 April 2014. For I who stay abroad, the election was held earlier today. I did not bother registering but somehow I got the invitation letter from the embassy to participate. There were 2 choices: via post or via person at the embassy directly. As I just moved house a few weeks back and yet to update my address with the embassy, postal method was out.

With the inconvenient location of the embassy, I felt very lazy to go. After all, I did not even know who I would be voting for. But my mum advised me: it is still better to go and vote rather than be a "golput" which stands for golongan putih or the white group i.e the group who does no vote. The reason is it is better to use my voting paper to prevent anyone from using my unused voting paper for their own agenda. In the end, I did go. I was pleasantly surprised to see so many people could be bothered to vote. Yes, Indonesia is in a terrible state. There is a crisis in leadership. All the candidates are obscure. Not sure who are the capable ones and even if the capable ones are elected, with the sheer size and complexity of bureaucracy, I am not sure if they are able to contribute to nation building effectively. Ultimately, we can either choose a candidate or choose a party (and let the party decide its candidate for the parliament). Since I am not going to send someone I don't even know for "easy money" as a member parliament, I just choose the party.

Despite the crowd, everything was very smooth and I did not experience any waiting. Kudos to the organiser. I spent quite a bit of time at the polling booth trying to figure out what to do. I remembered that the last time I went for an election, I had to draw a tick on the one I chose. I saw the posters on how to vote and I was a bit stunned. Did I have to draw a star or a circle?? That's weird!! Apparently I had to poke a hole on the party or the person that I choose. The star and circle that I saw actually represent the "poked" hole on the paper. Yea.. call me an idiot. Haha..

Anyway what I find really interesting today is that on the voter's database, my sex is registered as a female. I have no idea how they get my data as I never registered for election before leh!! Haha.. Unless there is really a female with an exactly same name as me. Ok it is quite funny but I also find it a bit irritating. I am still a male after all.

I checked my old blog posts for my previous election and looks like my memory fails me. 5 years ago I actually did not participate in the parliamentary election because I was lazy to go to the embassy. I did participate in the presidential election in Jakarta. I happened to be on holiday and my parents did not expect me to be there for election so actually they did not register me. I voted using my neighbour's voting right. No idea who this Roland is. Lol.. Now I am not surprised that somehow I become a female in the voter's database. Haha...