Election committees should hold talks: Amien

Election committees should hold talks: Amien

YOGYAKARTA (JP): A respected political scientist calls on the
two election monitoring committees, one official and the other
independent, to sit together and hold dialog.

Amien Rais, a lecturer at the Gadjah Mada University's School
of Social and Political Sciences, told the press here yesterday
that each of the two bodies could benefit from the other. Dialog
could start if neither one deems itself as the most "democratic"
institution, he said here yesterday.

The Independent Election Monitoring Committee (KIPP) could
really become a partner for and give inputs to the official
Election Supervision Committee, Amien said.

Amien, however, doubted that the independent poll watchdog,
established last month by a number of government critics, could
really be involved in the supervision of the various stages of
the 1997 general elections as it planned to do.

"I don't think it's going to be that easy for KIPP to
establish (branches to directly monitor vote casting) in the
polling booths," Amien said.

Mulyana W. Kusumah, the secretary general of the independent
poll watchdog, said the body does not aim at creating "political
impacts".

"It's an experiment at democratization," he told The Jakarta
Post here yesterday.

Prominent activists set up the independent election watchdog
to monitor the polls for 425 seats in the 500-seat House of
Representatives. The remaining 75 seats in the legislative body
are allocated for the representatives of the military.

Some 120 million of Indonesia's estimated 193 million people
are entitled to vote in the election next year.

The independent poll watchdog is chaired by Goenawan Mohamad,
former editor of the banned Tempo news magazine. Its membership
is made up of noted political observers, human rights campaigners
and government critics including Sri Bintang Pamungkas, Arbi
Sanit and Luhut Pangaribuan.

The official Election Supervision Committee is chaired by
Attorney General Singgih.

Deputy chairman of the Central Java office of the official
poll body Djuhad Mahya challenged the new organization to go
beyond rhetorics.

"Don't just become a paper tiger. The independent committee
should work hard, especially because here Governor Soewardi has
said he welcomed the committee," Djuhad said.

"I'd like to wait and see whether KIPP could really prove its
mettle," he said.

Not all response was as welcoming, however. In Kupang, East
Nusa Tenggara, Col. Rachman Idin, an official at the local office
of the Ministry of Home Affairs, refused to recognize the
independent body.

"It's controversial. Which is why I decide to play by the
rules, that any organization has to register to the government.
Otherwise, it's non-existent," he was quoted by Antara as saying.

In another part of his explanation to the press, Rachman said
the provincial government may allow 13,336 former communists
there to vote.

"We are considering to allow them to take part in the coming
elections because they have been found by the government to have
behaved well," said Rachman who is the head of the ministry's
socio-political directorate in East Nusa Tenggara.

But he also said that 272 other former members of the now-
defunct Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) in the province would
not be allowed to vote. He gave no reason for their continued
exclusion.

The communist party launched a bloody coup attempt in 1965.
Civilian and military officials are still frequently warning the
public of the communism latent threat. (har/swe)