Belo due to vote in Washington

JAKARTA (JP): Dili Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo is expected to vote at the embassy in Washington D.C. in tomorrow's general election.

Belo will be in Washington D.C. for several days from May 29, Antara quoted an embassy source as saying yesterday. Few details on the bishop's trip to the United States are available except that he arrived there last week for a meeting of the U.S. Bishops' Conference.

Belo had been in Portugal, leading a pilgrimage of the Salesian Order, to which he belongs, to the Our Lady of Fatima Shrine. The pilgrimage commemorated the 80th anniversary of the first apparition of the Virgin Mary to three children there on May 13.

The embassy source also said East Timorese anti-integration leader Ramos Horta had reportedly met United Nations Secretary- General Kofi Annan and UN envoy for East Timor Jamsheed Marker at the UN Headquarters in New York last Thursday.

Neither the Indonesian consulate office in New York or the embassy could say if Bishop Belo and Horta would meet.

The two missions said that Belo, being a good Indonesian citizen, was supposed to notify them of his presence in the U.S., Antara reported. Belo and Horta are cowinners of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize.

Meanwhile, preparations for the general election continued across the country yesterday.

The elections committee in East Timor would use helicopters to fetch ballot boxes from remote areas, the committee's secretary, Sjamsu Anwar, said in Dili. The local military would provide the air transportation for Oassu subdistrict in Viqueque, Atauro subdistrict in Ambeno regency and other areas.

In Bandung, West Java, residents are reportedly helping build local polling booths. The provincial administration's spokesman, Dachlan Hidayat, said 54,887 polling stations would be set up in the province's 25 regencies.

The province has 25,233,587 registered voters and a population of 40,323,798. Bogor regency has the most voters in the province with 2,453,460 people due to cast ballots at 4,472 polling stations.

In the 1992 election, the province had 20,998,299 voters.

From Bandar Lampung, Lampung, came a report that the isolated Pasaran-Kota Island in West Telukbetung subdistrict had set up a polling booth for its 524 voters. The island has a population of 1,540.

The polling station was erected in the SDN 3 elementary school's yard, near the local fish drying area.

"This is the most safest place from the waves," Antara quoted a local as saying. Most inhabitants are fishermen.

Lampung province has 6.8 million people and 3,378,739 registered voters; 9,048 polling stations will be erected for them in 2,014 villages.

Prone

Madura Police Chief Col. H.S. Adna Isa said in Sampang, East Java, that at least 20 subdistricts in Madura were susceptible to unrest.

Security would be tight around polling stations in Sumenep, Pamekasan, Sampang, Bangkalan and other areas, Isa said. In Sampang in 1993, security personnel and farmers clashed over a land appropriation case which led to several deaths.

In Jakarta, City Police Chief Maj. Gen. Hamami Nata gave assurances yesterday that no polling booths in his jurisdiction were considered "prone to unrest." The areas he mentioned were Jakarta, and the surrounding cities of Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi.

"The security personnel are ready to safeguard all of the public activities, including casting their votes (tomorrow)," he was quoted by city police spokesman Lt. Col. Edward Aritonang as saying yesterday.

A total of 12,000 police personnel will be deployed to safeguard 21,419 polling booths in the Greater Jakarta area.

The South Sumatra elections committee's secretary, Col. H. Mukhtar, said the province's 10,956 ballot boxes would be marked with a secret code to prevent manipulation.

In South Sumatra's capital of Palembang yesterday, Mukhtar said 4,147,941 of the province's 6,853,066 people were registered to vote.

Antara reported from Banda Aceh, Aceh, that 7,352 polling booths had been erected for 2,204,994 voters in that province. North Aceh has the most voters with 530,213 people, followed by East Aceh with 370,849.

The streets of Riau's capital of Pekanbaru are free of campaign paraphernalia, but are bustling with election preparations. The province has 6,918 polling stations, some on its remotest islands.

In Ujungpandang, South Sulawesi, 19,089 resettlers will reportedly vote in the election, including 1,500 families which resettled there this year. The voters lived in 28 resettlement camps in four regencies, Antara reported.

Overseas

Indonesians living abroad will also cast votes tomorrow. In Bonn, Germany, 3,000 of the 3,800 Indonesians living there are registered to vote. About 300 are expected to vote at the embassy, and the rest by mail.

About 2,700 Indonesians reside in Hamburg, Bremen and Schleswigh Holstein (Kiel). About 2,300 of them are eligible to vote, but only 1,608 have registered; the rest have changed address or left the country. About 700 Indonesians are registered to vote in Berlin.

In Moscow, 116 Indonesians are expected to vote. In Rome, 358 Indonesians are expected to vote. In Beijing, 296 people are registered to vote. (swe/33/24)