JAKARTA, Indonesia – I voted in Indonesia's first "democratic" elections in 1999. I remember things being incredibly tense and uncertain. Suharto's authoritarian regime had just come to an end and I was so excited – it was the first time that I really felt that I could change the course of the country.

Indonesian election officials with a voting paper.

I didn't vote in 2004 because I was disappointed by the 1999 election results.

I felt that we had staked all our hopes in our politicians and they had failed us. Nothing had changed. It was a new game but with the same players.

I don't think that my generation has fully recovered from the frustration of the 1999 elections. Most of my friends aren't voting today.

Now a decade after I first cast my vote I am covering the elections, watching new voters as excited as I was.

We met Rini, an 18-year-old first-time time voter. I walked away with the impression she really felt she could impact, not necessarily the whole country, but her own life. It made me feel excited again, especially coming off the back of our US election coverage. I felt that this time perhaps the elections could mean something.

In 1999 the main issues were political and economic reforms. We were transitioning from an authoritarian regime to trying to establish a democratically elected one. Now the issues being talked about are voter list fraud, the confusion about the political parties and the ballot, corruption and the economy.

The ballot is about the size of a newspaper. I, like the majority of my fellow countrymen and despite my work in the news business, have not heard of the vast majority of the candidates.

We watched the votes being cast, and we watched them being counted. Out in the open, seeming to be fully transparent. It was a process that made me feel I could say "my country is democratic."

But still many questions remain. For my generation, by virtue of what we have been through, is still highly skeptical of the institutions we are trying to uphold.

We can't seem to shake the notion that, no matter what, our politicians are corrupt and to be honest, we have yet to be proven wrong.

In 1999 it was enough just to have something called a democratic process. Now we want more. We want to see this done right.