E. Java students may lose voting rights

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)