Indonesia's democratic moments

Indonesias highly successful presidential election has been welcomed worldwide. But, in the English-language international media, the achievement has often been noted with familiar smugness. Indonesia is described as a young democracy, and its highly successful election as an anomaly. With the legacies of colonialism lingering on, many Indonesians think their country could not possibly outperform those of North America, Western Europe or Australia in democratic rituals. Indonesian friends were perplexed when I reminded them that in some of the supposedly mature democracies, politics has been dominated for decades by the same two major parties, whose policies and ideologies are barely distinguishable, leaving the majority of citizens politically powerless and radically alternative politics unthinkable.