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resident Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Monday that Indonesia had gone through trials and tribulations to become a “mature democracy”.

Speaking to ASEAN election organizers at the State Palace, the President said the region’s most-populous country had held three “fair and peaceful” elections.

Indonesia held its first democratic election in 1999 after decades of authoritarianism under Soeharto. It conducted its first direct presidential election in 2004, which led to Yudhoyono’s election as the nation’s sixth president.

Indonesia took its lessons from history in reforming its electoral system, which the President said was crucial to developing democracy. “We passed long processes that were often painful. However, it has made Indonesia’s democracy more maturer.”

Yudhoyono said that an immature democracy would only lead to horizontal conflicts and instability, adding that Indonesia would continue to reform its election system to ensure a democracy that reflected the country’s substantial values.

The President’s statement came amid allegations that the past two elections were plagued with irregularities in the wake of a forgery scandal involving former General Election Commission (KPU) member Andi Nurpati, who left her position on the commission to join the President’s Democratic Party.

Andi was accused of masterminding the forgery of a Constitutional Court document that granted a seat in the House of Representatives to Dewi Yasin Limpo from the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura), while in fact the seat should have gone to Mestariyani Habie from the Great Indonesia Movement (Gerindra). The case prompted the House to probe dozens of allegations of election fraud that occurred during the 2009 elections, in which Yudhoyono won his second term.

Critics doubted that the country would hold better elections in the future, given recent the passage of an election organizers bill that would make it easier for politicians to infiltrate the polling body. The bill is one of several on electoral reform that must be completed two years prior to the 2014 elections.

The meeting of election organizers at the State Place was the first for Indonesia. The participants included Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines. Representatives from non-ASEAN countries like East Timor, the US, Australia and India also attended the two-day meeting.

According to KPU chairman Hafis Anshari, the forum is a place where the participants can share their experiences and seek solutions to address certain problems.

Indonesia will share its experiences from its 2009 direct election, which became the biggest and the most complicated election in Asia.

“The 2009 election was highly complex and had the most variant problems in Indonesia’s election history,” Hafis said.

He said the 2009 election involved more than 171 million voters, 5 million electoral board staff, 44 political parties, nine months of campaigning, 700 million ballot papers and Rp 9.8 trillion spent from a budget allocation of Rp 20.1 trillion.