Election Comittesays ready monitor legislative vote

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The 20,000-strong Election Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu) says that it is ready to monitor the legislative vote on April 5 in all districts across the country and ensure that no electoral violations occurred.

Committee member Topo Santoso admitted on Wednesday, however, that its network would only be able to monitor polling stations and ballot counting committees as far down as the district level.

"To overcome the problem, we have signed agreements with a number of election monitoring groups like Cetro, KIPP and the Rectors Forum," he told The Jakarta Post.

Local monitoring groups, Topo added, had offered the poll body hundreds of thousands of volunteers to monitor the poll and the ballot count across the country.

If the groups find violations at the subdistrict level, all they have to do is report them to the committee's monitors at the district level, he explained.

"Our officials have the power to ask ballot counting committees to repeat their counts should any violations be detected," Topo said.

He said he was convinced that the committee's officers understood their duties as all of them had undergone a two-month orientation program.

"Currently, our offices are open 24 hours per day in case they need our advice or they need to clarify something," Topo said.

The poll body had informed local monitoring groups about the procedures for reporting violations. It had also warned them to make sure that they did not just concentrate on easily accessible polling stations and neglect those in remote or rural areas, he said.

The committee would also work hand in hand with foreign election monitors sponsored by a number of groups, Topo explained, although it was still unclear whether the foreign monitors would monitor all phases of the election.

"We will also brief them about our new electoral system so that they know what to do as part of their monitoring work," he commented.

According to Topo, several dozen overseas election observers had already registered with the committee.