How can the Presidential Election of a democratic nation be such a mess?

Over the past few days, the world has seen America, the most influential country in the world, hold its Presidential Election. It's also over these few days, however, that the world has felt that it has been fooled.

In the past thirteen months, there were at least five presidential elections of sorts in the world that caught the sight of the media: the Indonesian presidential election in October 1999, the Malaysian general election in November 1999, the Taiwanese presidential election in March 2000, the Yugoslavian presidential election in September 2000 and the American presidential election in November 2000. From what I have seen so far, of these five elections, I would say that the American presidential election has to be the most unimpressive one.

Of course, it is not just a personal opinion. The United States have indeed become a laughing stock for many other countries. The Italians are calling the States "Banada Republic." The Netherlands officially retracted the congratulation to Bush. The Cubans are totally unfazed by this so-called "democracy." The Zimbabweans regard this as a valuable lesson for politics students, with the state-controlled The Herald stating that "election intrigues [are] not a monopoly in the Third World." The Times of India, however, put it in most witty fashion: "Alfred Hitchcock couldn't have scripted it better... As with most American products, the battle for the Whitehouse showed the country's flair for turning molehills into mountains."

I would give an account to each of the four elections preceeding the American one, beginning with the Indonesian presidential election. It requires some explanation as it was not truly a democratic election, but nobody said Indonesia was a democratic country in the first place. It was preceeded by a Parliamental Election on June 7, 1999, in which more than 100 million people were indeed eligible to vote and did vote. It was a historic event for the Muslim country, as it marked its first sign of democracy in 44 years, since former totalitarian President Suharto was ousted in May 1998. The emerging Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) had a clear victory over the ruling Golkar party, but not without trouble. It took Indonesians six hours to cast all the ballots, but more than two weeks to count them. Many domestic and foreign analysts were calling foul play. Golkar was suspected to be using its old tricks that "maintained" its power since 1955: vote-buying, voter-impersonation, "indelible" ink that washed off with water. Yet Indonesians, after 44 years of fake elections, lacked the practice it required for a smooth operation. In some districts, armed forces and guerillas guarded polling stations, deterred potential opposition voters. This election, though an acknowledged and well-intended first step to democracy, earned plenty of criticism for Indonesia and the Golkar party. PDI-P, with 33.7% of the votes, finally won 153 seats out of the 462 in the Parliament.

The presidential election for Indonesia was held on October 20. This time around, only the parliament and an additional 238 appointees decided who the new president would be. All the press in the region predicted the race to be neck-and-neck between Megawati Sukarnoputri, leader of PDI-P, and then-President B.J. Habibie, representing the Golkar party. To everybody's surprise, Abdurrahman Wahid, from the Muslim factor National Awakening Party, was elected president with 373 votes, and Megawati Sukarnoputri with 313 votes, became his vice. (Leaders of the largest Muslim country in the world apparently did not like the idea of having a female president, as opposed to the growing power of PDI-P in the nation.) The Muslim members of the parliament, as well as nearly all of Golkar's delegates, backed Wahid up, and finally brought the political troubles in Indonesia to a close.

Technically speaking, the November 29 Malaysian general election last year was not for a president, but for a Prime Minister. With the blows of the Asian financial crisis, and the dismissal and arrest of Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who was later convicted for corruption and sodomy, the nation has seen radical changes over the past two to three years. The ruling United Malay's National Organization (UMNO), led by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad, maintained a two-third majority in the parliament. But it seemed to have lost some ground to the Islamic Party of Malaysia, known by its Malaysian acronym PAS. Apparently a lot of UMNO followers were very upset at the decision at Mahathir's decision to dismiss Anwar, and later on caused him to be convicted. A large number of UMNO supporters switched gear for the election to vote PAS.

Taiwan held its presidential election earlier this year. Since the government was established in 1949, the Nationalist Party (KMT) had been in power. The March 25 election marked a change to the situation. Months prior to the election, two major parties: KMT and the Democratic Progression Party (DPP), were running the race. Circumstances arose. In December 1999, the then KMT Presidential candidate James Soong, who was supported by more than 40% of the Taiwanese people, was forced out of the party because of a set-up caused by jealousy rising within the party that had ruled Taiwan for 55 years. He ran as an independent candidate, facing not one, but two competitors: Chen Shui-bian from DPP, and the new KMT candidate and former Vice President Lien Chan.

Despite the circumstances, Soong's popularity gradually rose back from the 26% when he was kicked out of the party, to around 35% immediately before the elections. Pro-independence Chen had roughly the same amount of support. Lien, under the shadow of former President Lee Teng-hui, did not compare to both Chen and Soong. The results of the election, which came merely three hours after the polls closed, showed that Chen ultimately won the race, with a two percent lead over Soong at 39%-37%. Even though at the moment the island is trying to find ways to impeach the president after being in power for less than half a year for various reasons, the election went extremely smoothly and did show a high level of democracy.

The Yugoslavian election came on September 24 this year amidst the riots and anguist across the Balkan state. After the NATO bombings and western sanctions, former President and malign strongman Slobodan Milosevic called an election nine months before his term to trade on popular resentment. He never expected the outcomes to be against him. He never expected Vojislav Kostunica to emerge. He never expected to be finished.

He was wrong. The Serbs, tired of the western sanctions and bombings and riots within the country, wanted someone else. Opponents did not really fight amongst themselves as Milosevic thought would happen. More importantly, when the polls result returned on September 25, President Kostunica did receive 51% of the votes, while Milosevic earned 36%. Milosevic defiantly shaved the official count to 49%-39%, and called for a runoff election. This has triggered a wave of protests across the entire nation. The Serbs slowly all turned against the tyrant. The police force switched sides, the army gave way, the parliament building went in flames. Soon afterwards, state controlled media turned away from Milosevic as well. Milosevic had nothing left to sustain his rule. He finally conceded on October 6, a day before Kostunica sworn as the new president on October 7.

What Yugoslavia showed to the world was impressive. Chaotic, yet beautiful. The Balkan state had been frustrated by the Milosevic misrule for so long that the people finally voiced their opinion to the country and to the rest of the planet. Kostunica's victory is an indication of a new era of Yugoslavia.

So, what is the deal with the United States? Why, at more than seventy-two hours after the polls had closed, was the world's strongest power unable to tell the world who is the 43rd President of the United States of America? Let us consider some hypotheses. In a hypothetical country where the political situation is stable, and people are living properously, in a general election, people will generally want to maintain a government that does a good job to run the nation, one that is benevolent to its citizens. They will in general not want to shift gears to social uncertainty or known instability.

On the other hand, in a country where the quality of life is not up to par, where the government is unstable, and riots, protests or demonstrations break out every now and then, if the people are given a chance of a general election, they would opt for a new government, provided opposition forces are united enough.

However, the situation in the U.S. is neither of those. True, the country has seen the strongest and most durable economic growth in the 8 years under Clinton's rule. It has also made considerable progress in technology, living standard, quality of life, equalities and other social issues in general. There were occasionally inevitable trouble, but they were addressed relatively promptly. Clinton, despite his "personal misconducts," was a very competent president. But under the constitution of the country, he cannot run for the third term. I suspect that the American public would not abandon him, were he eligible to run for another term, for the reasons I stated in the first hypothetical country. Since a change was unavoidable, people's opinion on the new leader of the country became highly divided.

This division of opinions has become the cause of the mess we now see. Before the polls, nobody had imagined the flaw the current system could expose. The electoral college is an outdated mode for an election. It segregated the country into different political regions, because in the end, it was the general opinion in each individual state, instead of the combined opinion of the entire population, that mattered. In this particular election, the northeast and the Pacific coast are primarily Democrat, and the rest of the country tending towards Republican rule. What about the voices of Democrat supporters in the mainly Republican states? Or the Republican opinions in the Democrat states? What about third party supporters? It didn't seem that they were truly represented in the final outcome.

Nobody as of yet knows for sure who is going to win the White House. However, were it an election where each and every individual vote truly counted, Gore would have secured presidency for receiving more popular vote. It would not have been an unanimous result, but one that shows democracy in action. The citizens would be in charge. Everyone would literally have a say.

Another problem of this election lies in the media. Premature calls happened not just once, but twice, in the State of Florida. It also happened once in the state of Nevada. The misleading calls were a manifestation of a lack of professionalism in the media. Many people from within and outside the nation were fooled. After congratulations of sorts were sent to George W. Bush from other nations, nobody knew what to do about them when it was known that the call was false.

As observed by everyone on the planet, the nation still cannot announce its new president elect, where one state will decide the result. That state is Florida, where Jeb Bush, brother of George W. Bush, is the governor, and a lot of alleged irregularities were reported during the election and a few days afterwards. A recount was conducted throughtout the entire state. A second recount in several counties, and a manual recount was called for last Thursday. There were also reports of missing ballot boxes and invalid ballots. Not only that, a "confusing design" in the Palm Beach county may now be the cause of a lawsuit, which could potentially delay the final outcome by weeks, if not months. All these disputes have made domestic and foreign observers suspect the possibility of election scam and possible corruption within the state. Analysts are all questioning over how much democracy and justice this controversy may represent.

During this election, America is indeed not demonstrating the ideology that it so strongly advocates to other nations. When compared to the elections that happened in other nations, all of which supposedly "less democratic" than America, this election has truly embarrassed the country.