E. Java students may lose voting rights

SURABAYA (JP): Thousands of students at Islamic boarding schools and universities in East Java may lose their voting rights in next year's general elections because registration officers have failed to take them down as eligible voters.

Syumli Sadli, chairman of the provincial chapter of the United Development Party (PPP), among whose traditional constituents are the santri or boarding schools students, said around 5,000 students of Salafiyah Syafiiyah Islamic boarding school in Sukorejo sub-district, Situbondo regency, are still waiting to be registered.

The preliminary registration started on May 1 and will end on May 20.

Syumli told The Jakarta Post that officers had only registered 1,000 of the 6,000 students eligible to vote.

He said he had filed a complaint with the East Java chapter of the General Elections Institute (LPU). "The officers of the local chapter first said that they had run out of registration forms. Now they have promised us that they will register the remaining 5,000 students before May 20," he said.

Earlier, the officers were reported as saying that they could not register the students because they did not have identity cards.

Thousands of students at other Islamic boarding schools in East Java, like the Tebu Ireng school and the Tambak Beras Islamic school, both in Jombang, may also lose their voting rights.

Thousands of university students in Surabaya, Malang, and Jember, may also be denied their vote because they have not been registered either.

Some of the students told the Post that they couldn't be bothered as they did not have any intention to vote in the first place.

"I'm going to abstain from voting. I'm a Golput," Andy Rahardja, a student of the Malang-based National Institute of Technology (ITN), told the Post.

Golput, which stands for Golongan Putih (literally, "white group"), is a term used to refer to those who opt not to vote for any of the three political parties at election time at all.

On May 1st, registration officers began knocking on doors to register all Indonesians 17 years or older, and teenagers who are already married, as voters in the 1997 general election.

Under the Indonesian electoral system, voters choose their representatives for local government and the legislature. (15/imn)