Election institute faces lawsuit over dropped candidates
Election institute faces lawsuit over dropped candidates
JAKARTA (JP): The United Development Party (PPP) is planning
to sue the General Election Institute for rejecting its
legislature candidates "without clear grounds".
Secretary-General Tosari Wijaya said Tuesday that because of
suspicion of foul play, the party executives were currently
gathering information on how the institute screened its
candidates.
"We'll file a lawsuit against the General Election Institute
once we have strong evidence of 'violations of procedures',"
Tosari said. He did not elaborate why the party executives became
suspicious.
Last Friday, during a General Election Institute meeting, the
National Screening Committee's chairman, Sutoyo N.K., announced
the committee had rejected 130 candidates from PPP, 21 candidates
from Golkar and 106 candidates from the Indonesian Democratic
Party. The number approved for the provisional list of
legislature candidates was 2,293.
Each political group submitted a maximum of 850 candidates for
next year's election. The figure is twice the number of House of
Representatives seats up for grabs; the remaining 75 House seats
are reserved for the Armed Forces, whose members do not vote.
Sutoyo cited the nominees' failure to meet the deadline for
various administrative matters as grounds for rejection, and
that the public could file their objections against listed
candidates with the institute.
Sutoyo did not mention whether there were candidates who
failed the screening procedures, which were to weed out those
candidates with past communist links.
Tosari, however, blasted the institute for what he said was
"groundless rejection" of the party's candidates. He pointed out
that out of the 130 rejected nominees, 55 did not receive no-
communists-links statements from Bakorstanas, the internal
security agency involved in the screening.
"The screening committee did not give us clear explanation as
to why our 55 candidates did not get the statements," he said.
Tosari said he suspected that three of the candidates were
rejected because they were civil servants. Members of the Corps
of Civil Servants are tacitly expected to be loyal to the
dominant Golkar group.
The three were Fauzi A.R. Fachruddin, a doctor at Yogyakarta
General Hospital; Toha Abdurrahman, a lecturer from Sunan
Kalijaga State Institute of Islamic Studies; and Jalaludin.
"We need as many selected candidates as possible to be our
vote-getters during the election campaign," he said.
According to the time table established by the General
Election Committee, the election campaigning will start April 29
through May 23, 1997. A cooling-off period of seven days follows
before polling day, which is set for May 29, 1997. (imn)