US expats vote Obama in his Indonesian childhood city
JAKARTA (AFP) — Amid balloons and bunting, US presidential hopeful Barack Obama won an early "Super Tuesday" victory over Hillary Clinton in the Indonesian capital where he spent part of his childhood.
It may have been small -- fewer than 100 registered Democrats took part -- but it was a first chance for Americans abroad to cast their vote in the race for the party's White House candidate.
The midnight (1700 GMT Monday) ballot at a five-star hotel saw red-eyed US expatriates stay up late to choose between Obama and Clinton.
Organisers from Democrats Abroad gave them paper flags bearing a different candidate's name on each side in a gesture toward fairness, but it was clear early on that Obama enjoyed an edge here.
"It's definitely Obama in Jakarta," said 40-year-old Laurel Maclain, who works on a USAID child health programme, as she looked around at voters who, like her, wore T-shirts emblazoned with Obama's face.
Obama, a junior senator from Illinois, spent part of his childhood living and going to school in Menteng, a suburb of decayed colonial grandeur down the highway from the sheer glass of the JW Marriott hotel hosting the vote.
He moved to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, when he was six after his divorced mother remarried an Indonesian foreign student.
Security was very tight as usual at the US-owned hotel, which was bombed in 2003 by Islamic militants in an attack that left 12 dead.
While the vote was the first to fall on Super Tuesday, final voting for all Democrats living overseas -- both in person and online -- will not be complete until February 12.
The official Super Tuesday vote sees 22 contests for Democrats and 21 for Republicans, and will decide more than half the delegates to their conventions later this year that will ultimately select the presidential candidates.
Adrian Ardie, chairman of Democrats Abroad in Indonesia, said all the fuss surrounding this vote was designed to echo the New Hampshire town of Dixville Notch.
That town's miniscule 17-voter turnout at midnight on January 8 was keenly watched as the opening of that state's crucial primary contest.
Turnout here was small too, but the crowd of consultants, aid workers and academics were far from rustic heartland types.
Both camps used the lead-up to the midnight vote to call in endorsements from the United States.
Clinton-backer General Wesley Clark, himself a contender for nomination in 2004, called in via an online telephone to deliver his stump speech, oblivious to a scrambled link that amused the crowd by garbling much of his comments.
Obama's half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng had better success with her phone line and was enthusiastically cheered.
The provisonal tally released after the vote did not give a total number of ballots cast, but saw Obama win 75 percent to Clinton's 25 percent.
Robert Lamont, a 53-year-old USAID worker who has lived in Indonesia for 14 months, said his choice of Obama was due to a combination of charisma and the candidate's conciliatory approach to foreign policy.
"I think Obama appeals to Democrats abroad because he focuses on foreign policy issues... for me it's that he does have experience overseas," Lamont said.
"That means he has more sensitivity to the wider world than someone who has lived in the US her whole life."
Loretta Kendrick, a 76-year-old retired photographer from Oklahoma City, in town to visit her consultant daughter, Anita, said she was voting for Clinton because of her experience.
"They're both pretty much saying they're going to do the same things," she said in a broad accent.
She said Obama's childhood in Jakarta had not influenced her vote but that she was concerned false rumours arising from his time here -- such as that he studied at an Islamic boarding school -- could hurt his candidacy.
"I think people will listen to that and it will influence things."
