Activists volunteer to monitor 1997 elections
Activists volunteer to monitor 1997 elections
SURABAYA (JP): Activists concerned about widespread cheating in past polls plan to form an independent body to monitor the 1997 general election.
Permadi Satrio Wiwoho, one of the activists, said here yesterday the Jakarta-based watchdog will be called the "Independent National Council for the Monitoring of General Election".
"We are working on the final details and the results will be made public soon," the soothsayer, who was jailed last year for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad, told The Jakarta Post.
He said more than 30 public figures and non-governmental organization activists are working on the final details of the plan.
If it does come into being, this body will be the second independent poll monitoring committee. The first was established by activists of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and legal aid institutes in Bandung, West Java.
The activists, lamenting the fraud in previous elections, have vowed to independently monitor all stages of the general elections, right from the registration procedure to ballot counting.
The activists also said that similar committees will be set up in the cities of Jakarta, Lampung, Medan, Mataram, Denpasar and Ujungpandang.
Permadi said senior journalist Goenawan Mohamad has been approached to chair the planned monitoring council's executive board and controversial scholar Abdurrahman Wahid to lead the advisory council.
Other figures expected to lend their support include human rights campaigner Adnan Buyung Nasution. Leaders of a number of new mass organizations, such as New Masyumi, Parkindo, YKPK and PCPP, will also join it, Permadi said.
"This is an independent body, and we don't need the government to legalize it," Permadi said.
In Jakarta, Goenawan said the plan is still in an "embryonic" stage and it still too early to make comments on its substance.
"As a paranormal Permadi may sound too optimistic. Maybe he knows something others don't," said the former editor of Tempo newsweekly, which the government shut down in 1994.
Meanwhile, Abdurrahman Wahid, who chairs the 30-million member Nahdlatul Ulama Moslem organization, rejects the post.
"It in impossible for me to join the independent poll monitoring body because of its political nature," Gus Dur told The Jakarta Post" by telephone yesterday.
"Remember, I chair the NU, which has pledged not to get involved in politics," he pointed out. "I have told them I can't join."
Permadi said that his committee has no relations with the one set up in Bandung, neither will it open branches in other regions.
He also said the committee will operate in ways which are similar to those of the government-sponsored National Commission for Human Rights.
"Its members will directly monitor the election procedures across the country, checking whether the law is being upheld," he said.
The independent committee will then draw up reports for the general public and the social institutes. "We hope that the committee will help improve the public's awareness of their political rights," he said.
In addition, the committee will be ready to accept suggestions and reports on how the existing laws on general elections fail to accommodate the "fair and honest" principle.
The two minority parties--the Moslem-based United Development Party and the nationalist-Christian alliance Indonesian Democratic Party--have often demanded that the polls be held based on the principle. (15/pan/imn)