From remote tribal areas to flooded cities, Indonesians go to polls
one-day elections.
The Southeast Asian nation's election is a mammoth exercise in logistics spanning three time zones with ballot boxes transported by truck, boat, helicopter, horse and even ox-cart.
The election was just the fifth since the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998 and voters across the vast archipelago of more than 17,000 of islands were determined to cast their ballots.
In remote Central Papua's Timika, residents queued at a bamboo-framed shelter covered in a blue tarpaulin roof to register before voting.
«I will vote for the one who would be the best to develop Papua,» 19-year-old student Daton, who only gave his first name, told AFP in the province where separatists have waged a decades-long insurgency.
Police armed with assault rifles stood guard nearby but with around a quarter of a million officers and soldiers deployed, and 800,000 polling stations, their resources were spread thinly.
More than 3,300 kilometres (2,000 miles) to the west, torrential thunderstorms delayed the start of voting in parts of the capital Jakarta but the rains failed to dampen the hopes of voters as they queued to cast their ballots.
Floods forced the relocation of some polling stations across the sprawling megacity of 10 million, with some residents still waiting to vote two hours after polls were due to open.
«We didn't expect the polling station to be flooded like this,» said 30-year-old hotel worker Afrian Hidayat.
In some areas workers used
