Long before voting started in Indonesia's general election yesterday morning, dozens of electors were waiting patiently on white plastic chairs in a communal volleyball court in east Jakarta which had been converted into polling station No 33.
The diminutive presiding officer in neatly-pressed grey shirt, Mr Ahmad Khudlon, checked that everything was ready - officials in place, a six-inch nail in each polling booth for punching ballot papers, ink bottle opened for marking voters' hands - and gave the signal to begin.
Everything went smoothly, the only distraction coming from a rooster crowing indignantly as it fluttered around the concrete court, and within an hour most of the neighbourhood had punched their voting slips and dipped a finger in the indelible purple ink, much to the amusement of friends.
This scene in the Jakarta sub-district of Tebet was repeated in a quarter of a million polling stations across Indonesia yesterday, as the people of the world's fourth most populous country rejoiced in their first free elections in 45 years.
The voting trends will not become clear until today, but the latest opinion poll, in Tempo magazine, suggested a big defeat for the ruling Golkar party, with opposition parties taking most seats in the 500-member parliament which will replace a rubber-stamp assembly.
It forecast that Golkar would slump to 5 per cent and that the Democratic Party-Struggle of Megawati Sukarnoputri, whose officials were already celebrating last night, would win the biggest share of votes with 27 per cent.
Everyone now concedes that Indonesian elections under President Suharto were rigged in favour of Golkar. "This time the election is fair," said Mr Khudlon, who runs an orphanage for street kids, "that is why the people are so happy."
The man in charge of the ink bottle said he had not bothered to vote before but this time everyone in the neighbourhood would do so as they felt they could made a difference.
"Look, she's my mother," he said, laughing, as he guided the plump little finger of an elderly woman into the tiny ink bottle.
Two international observers from the US, Mr Patrick Merloe, of the National Democratic Institute, and Mr William Fuller, of the Asia Foundation, who turned up at the Tebet station, seemed satisfied that the election was being conducted properly.
They asked about the red and black shirt worn by the young observer from Ms Megawati's party, as it looked almost identical to the Democratic Party-Struggle Tshirt, and party colours are banned, but Mr Khudlon assured them no one was in the least intimidated.
Even prison inmates were allowed to vote yesterday, but the few remaining political prisoners in Indonesia, like Budiman Sudjatmiko, the bespectacled 29year-old chairman of the radical People's Democratic Party, were unable to do so, despite the fact that he is a candidate and leader of one of 48 parties contesting the election.
In a grass courtyard inside Cipinang high-security prison in Jakarta, to which a handful of reporters were admitted yesterday, he told me that this was because he and seven comrades in the prison were serving sentences over the limit of five years.
Sudjatmiko was jailed for 13 years for subversion in 1997 for opposing Suharto and remains inside because he has had refused a pardon from his successor, President B.J. Habibie, demanding an amnesty instead.
"We were the first to oppose Suharto's New Order and several layers of opposition followed, but what was important was that we set a precedent," he said, as groups of shaven-headed thieves and killers were escorted in and out of a converted assembly hall, one of the few polling stations where indelible ink was not needed.
At Sudjatmiko's request a cheerful warden rushed off to buy him a packet of Marlboro, a sign of the stature he enjoys in the new era of reformasi (reform).
During the election campaign crowds of students displayed his party's red flag with yellow star and cog-wheel at rallies in support of his candidates, some of whom are listed as missing persons from the final days of the Suharto era when the military helped kidnap and torture socialist activists.
Last night the chairman of the Indonesian general election committee said that, apart from a few minor incidents, the polling had gone smoothly, confounding predictions of widespread violence.
Aceh was the only region where there was serious conflict, though even there clashes were less bloody than had been feared. There was, however, a low turnout in this disaffected area.
Everywhere else the turnout seemed heavy. In one district 90 polling stations had to stay open late because the ink had not arrived, and in a Jakarta sub-district 200 people "got mad because they were not registered and burned a polling booth when they were not allowed to vote."
Polling was peaceful in East Timor which is preparing for a referendum on independence in August, he said.