A matter of printing

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.