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espite reports of irregularities in the manual vote tabulation, there is widespread confidence that the transparent and democratic process, which was largely thanks to public participation, will result in a new president as chosen by the public.

The General Elections Commission (KPU) and the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) also deserve, at least so far, their fair share of praise. However, it is civil society groups '€” and their passion for a fair and democratic process '€” that, come the announcement of the official results on July 22, will have played an integral role in the 2014 presidential election.

The website kawalpemilu.org is such an example. With the help of hundreds of volunteers who closely monitored vote recapitulation, the website administrators are doing the real vote-counting job of the KPU: Collecting vote tallies from each polling station and uploading the data for the public.

Of course, the vote recapitulation is a la kawalpemilu, which literally means guard the election, must and should not be considered official despite the data being exactly the same as the KPU'€™s.

Following the data entry of 93.45 percent of the archipelago'€™s 472,672 polling stations as of Wednesday, the website found that presidential candidate Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo and his running mate Jusuf Kalla secured over 60.9 million votes or 52.83 percent of the vote, with rival pair Prabowo Subianto-Hatta Rajasa behind by nearly 6.6 million votes.

Whatever the outcome of the KPU'€™s official results, public monitoring, by the likes of kawalpemilu.org and other civil society groups, will prevent the KPU from compromising its credibility. That is democracy. And Indonesia should thank proponents of the reform movement for ensuring their ideal of '€œrule by the people'€ could become reality.

Former Mathematical Olympiad champion Ainun Najib, the man behind kawalpemilu.org, said the website was created in response to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono'€™s call for public participation in monitoring vote recapitulation.

But even without the President'€™s appeal, civil society moved to exercise its right to safeguard the tabulation process after widespread reports of irregularities. Some media suspect the attempts to rig the votes are organized, although their allegations are yet to be proved.

In its investigation, the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) found that manipulation might have occurred in 13 provinces where it had conducted election monitoring activities. Chairman of the rights body, Hafid Abbas, said that with only a slim margin separating the two presidential pairs based on numerous quick-count results, the potential for vote rigging had never been higher.

No doubt civil society'€™s involvement in the election process is a development we should cherish. Amid widespread distrust in state institutions'€™ commitment to impartiality, the public'€™s awareness proves Indonesia is fertile ground for democracy to flourish. It is, therefore, very difficult, if not impossible, to deny the publics demand for the leaders it knows deserve the mandate '€” Jokowi-Kalla, at least as the manual vote recapitulation kawalpemilu.org has shown. It is the only possibility for the nation.