Indonesian Voters taste democracy in today's polls

More than 153 million people in the world's fourth most populous country are eligible to vote at some 580,000 polling stations, dotted across a tropical archipelago which spans three time zones.

More than three decades of army-backed authoritarian rule ended in 1998 when Suharto was forced to step down amid an economic crisis but the six-year transition to full democracy has been messy.

"Whoever becomes Indonesia's first directly elected president is going to face a nightmarish inbox," wrote Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group in a recent issue of Time magazine.