This week the people of Indonesia went to the polls, the second nation-wide elections after 1998 following the fall of the Soeharto regime and the restoration of what is still too new and too fragile to be called a 'democracy' in any meaningful sense of the word.

Though the results will only be announced at the end of April, the fact that Indonesia managed to cobble together something that looks like a national election system has already come as a surprise to many observers and students of Indonesia's convoluted and problem-ridden politics.