A matter of printing

Election day is just 33 days away and even as basic an issue as whether polling stations will have their ballot papers on time is far from certain.

The General Elections Commission (KPU) cannot hide its anxiety, with some valiantly airing confidence while deputy Ramlan Surbakti acknowledges that he and his colleagues "cannot sleep well" amid the current preparations -- or the lack of them.

Ahead of the legislative election slated for April 5 the KPU has received only a fraction of the films which it must recheck and validate before they go to print. As of Tuesday it was reported that the state-run printing firm PNRI had only delivered 77 films from its share of 2,090 films. The management meanwhile said, as quoted by Kompas on Tuesday, that their work was still held up by constant changes in the names of legislative candidates.

Under pressure from a worried public and also provincial offices of the KPU, the KPU finally released its contingency plan -- although this does not sound entirely convincing either, given the need for 660 million ballot papers to reach polling stations in over 400 regions and municipalities on time.

As Minister of Home Affairs Hari Sabarno said, the government could still overcome the problem of other logistics such as ballot booths if necessary -- but of course the provision of ballot papers depends entirely on the KPU.

The contingency plan, or what we know of it, now incorporates the possibility of a number of remote polling stations receiving their papers on March 30, instead of March 25, according to the last revised schedule (which slated printing to be completed at the end of February).

With this latest schedule the KPU has not felt it necessary, it seems, to consider requests to prepare for the possibility of holding elections at a later date in areas where ballot papers may arrive late. Indeed the KPU might be afraid of violating the elections law which holds no provision for such a possibility. But in past elections in areas of Papua province, for instance, it took eight days for ballot papers to arrive, which opens the possibility of late arrivals -- meaning the probable violation of the constitutional right of citizens to vote.

KPU itself earlier ruled that ballot papers should be received at local polling stations 10 days ahead of voting day, and 30 days ahead of voting day at polling stations outside the country.

As solutions like on-line voting may only be feasible in the rather distant future everything possible must be done to overcome what has long been predicted as a logistics nightmare.

The KPU has correctly included the Newspapers Publishers Union in the 18-member consortium to print the ballot papers in a number of electoral districts. But given the complaints already raised by some other members regarding the various sizes of ballot papers, including broadsheets which are not the office-size standard, we cannot help thinking that maybe many more newspaper publishers should have been involved. They have access, not only to resources to print various sizes of paper, but also to the distribution network which is now crucial to the success of the elections. With this in mind the prospective late schedule should not have been an issue.

But as things stand, as it was mentioned earlier, a clear solution for the worst-case scenario is still needed. As nerve racking as the situation is, mere assurances from KPU members that things are "under control" cannot stop us from feeling that worse possibilities are being glossed over. As dates have been the only possible revision cited so far, one gets the impression that nothing is quite certain. The 18-member consortium is doing the best that it can -- with one member saying printing could be completed in three days, while another says 10.

Without a clear plan made known to the public, and even local offices of the KPU across the country and abroad, the duty to ensure citizens' constitutional rights in this crucial event would rest on a good measure of wishful thinking.