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“Everything just goes on as usual. Nothing’s changed,” Muhammad Riskonhasan, 22, said.

Having spent seven years in a traditional Islamic boarding school, or pesantren, in Rembang, Central Java, Riskonhasan said from his viewpoint the current administration had done little .

Considering the presidential election was more difficult than in 2004, because this time around he has to make his own choice, free from others’ influence.

“All the candidates have their own strengths and weaknesses. I just believe that I should choose my leader based on my own conscience,” Riskonhasan said.

However, he held no high hopes for whoever would be elected. He said he viewed voting as “just dropping our hopes in a box” and then seeing which were realized — if any.

Ahmad, a resident of Rembang, said the region had in the past been the territory of the “bull,” alluding to the symbol of presidential candidate Megawati Sukarnoputri’s Indonesian Democracy Party of Struggle (PDI-P), but had now instead “turned blue,” the color of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party.

Although students at the city’s pesantren are still spending their time studying and reciting the Koran during the current school holiday, many were equally as enthusiastic about casting their votes in Wednesday’s election.

During the campaign, these Islamic boarding schools were seen as a potentially rich source of votes by all three pairs of presidential candidates.

In the past, in areas that had strong systems of Islamic boarding schools, politicians knew that forming a relationship with a few school principals was enough to guarantee them the votes of the students.

But times have begun to change and when it comes to politics, boarding school students are no longer required to have blind faith in their principals, the kyais, whose word had long been law.

Toni, 18, said he had trouble deciding who to vote for because he didn’t have much time to study the profiles and track records of each of the candidates.

“In past years, it would have been easy because we would have been advised to vote for a particular candidate,” Toni said.

Having spent most of the last five years within the close confines of his boarding school, Toni said that he and his fellow students had little idea about what was happening in the outside world.

“We live in the boarding school, which makes it difficult to see development taking place outside,” he said.

Maftukhah, 20, said students “don’t watch television. We only subscribe to one newspaper, and we have little time to read it because we spend so much time reciting the Koran.”

He said that unlike the April 8 legislative elections, when about 80 percent of the students at his school were not on the final voters list, the majority of the students were included on the voter rolls for Wednesday’s election. “We can vote now,” Maftukhah said.

Ahmad Mustofa Bisri, a prominent cleric and head of Roudlatut Talibin Islamic boarding school in Rembang, said he did not try to influence the votes of his students in the presidential election.

He said the students had to become used to following their own guidance when it came to electing political leaders.

“They have learned and are becoming more rational,” Mustofa said.

He said that just like his students, he did not expect much from the election. “Only that the winner will lend an ear to the people.”  Febriamy Hutapea