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)