INDONESIA: Voice of the Kampongs

At dawn one day last week, the people of the Javanese kampong (village) of Tjidjantung began assembling in impassive silence to vote in Indonesia’s first national election. Like some 43 million others across the island republic, Tjidjantung’s 658 voters were mostly illiterate, indifferent to the issues, but they were plainly conscious of a momentous event.

Nimbly crossing a stream on a log worn smooth by countless bare feet, a mass of moving color in their freshly laundered sarongs, they gathered before the thatched home of the village lurah (leader) to hear an election official explain the proceedings. At least half of them were women, often with naked, suckling babies. “Vote freely,” said the official. “Whoever buys or sells votes will be prosecuted … Do you understand?” The crowd murmured, “Yes, yes.”

Next, while the voters pressed close to the porch rail to watch, the official ceremoniously counted the blank ballots. Then he picked up the varnished wooden ballot box, held it aloft like a magician doing a trick. “Is it empty?” he asked. “Empty, empty,” came the chorused reply. “There is no cheating?” “No cheating,” chanted the voters, “no cheating.” Sharp at 8 a.m., the official called the name of the first voter, a wizened, crippled man of 95. He limped to the palm-leaf voting booth, spread the ballot over a sandbag, hesitated for several minutes, then carefully punched a nail through the symbol of his chosen party.

As the voting dragged on, a blistering sun turned the kampong into a steam bath, but nobody left. Even after the polls closed, the wilted voters waited to watch the counting by kerosene lamp. This was typical of polling places everywhere—intense, inarticulate interest, no disorders of any sort.

Conclusive results were not likely for several days. But at week’s end, with about a third of the vote counted, it looked as though President Soekarno’s anti-Western Nationalist Party, which generated the revolution against the Dutch and then led the nation into a perilous era of economic chaos and collaboration with the Communists, had retained a major voice in Indonesia’s affairs.

The Nationalists were well ahead of the anti-Communist Masjumi (Moslem) Party, which had been favored to win, and the Communists were pressing the Masjumi for second place.