A display of individual commitment to peace by millions of Acehnese is what we are likely to see in the near future, following Monday's elections and the announcement of early unofficial results.

While outsiders, and some Acehnese, anxiously look for signs of returning violence, it has been equally easy to find expressions of conviction among locals that all will be well; that bickering over who wins means little compared to the privilege of being able to experience orderly and peaceful democratic elections.

The joyful shouts during vote counting at polling stations around the province spoke volumes. The first direct elections in the province, featuring 260 candidates running for the positions of regent, mayor and governor, many of them on opposite sides during the war, were a solace for Acehnese who lost loved ones in decades of bloodshed and the devastating tsunami, apart from the victims of a "huge wave of corruption," as locals say.

The province is now a model for the rest of the country, being the first in which candidates for public office were allowed to run as independents, free from the dictates of political parties.

Unofficial early estimates that more than 85 percent of 2.6 million registered voters cast ballots Monday is telling of the enthusiasm with which the elections were greeted. Monitors also recorded just a few incidents of intimidation, saying that overall the problems found were insignificant for a province going through its first direct polls for regional heads.

Ahead of the second-year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami, we are reminded that this a province where a large part of the public facilities and infrastructure was destroyed, and where many bureaucrats fled their posts during the earlier period of military operations.

Therefore voting, as one Acehnese told The Jakarta Post, "is an individual battle for peace", a contribution to determining who will lead the collective effort to push Aceh further along the road to recovery and progress.

Being able to vote directly for candidates, others said, made them "very happy", and that all that was needed now was to watch how the new leaders provided residents with a sense of security in their daily lives.

With the early unofficial results having been announced, outsiders are seeing a pattern of an overwhelming preference for something new to the candidates from political parties born and bred under the current system in which voters had no say.

Independent candidates, apart from those running for governor, are reported to have won regent posts in a number of the province's 21 regencies.

Statements from the central government welcoming whoever wins in Aceh provide an important message to the people of the province that their choices will be respected above all else – regardless of those who are wary of the Free Aceh Movement waving its separatist flag again through the success of members running as independents.

The words of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Vice President Jusuf Kalla and military commander Air Chief Marshall Djoko Suyanto also are crucial to the rest of the nation and its politicians, who often display a willful ignorance of the history of oppression in Aceh in the name of the national red-and-white flag.

It is thanks to all those who made the Helsinki peace deal possible, and those who watched over its implementation, including the Aceh Monitoring Mission, that Acehnese now dismiss fears of further violence over ideology. Candidates and voters said the Helsinki deal remains the framework, under the watch of the international community, for maintaining peace in the province.

As one observer said, any violence that might arise over the results of the polls would be just like election violence anywhere else in Indonesia, when supporters of losing candidates feel they have been cheated.

Overall, we share the conviction of the Acehnese that the elections and the acceptance of the results will put them on course for further progress toward recovery and prosperity.