Election monitors sought for areas prone to conflict

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The two presidential candidates were told on Tuesday to provide more monitors to witness ballot counting in areas considered to be vulnerable to political clashes.

Lawyers for the Elections Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu) said the presence of monitors from both the Megawati Soekarnoputri and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono camps would ensure transparency and prevent conflicts over election results.

"The two factions will be going all out to win the election runoff. Conflicts may arise after the vote count in those areas where the number of rival supporters are comparable," said Bambang Wijayanto, a lawyer for the committee.

He made the call during a meeting between the committee, the Constitutional Court, the General Elections Commission (KPU) and the Megawati and Susilo campaign teams.

Bambang said the campaign teams should train their monitors before sending them to these areas so that they would know what to do during the vote count.

He said that Panwaslu had identified the areas of concern across the country, and had offered this information to the campaign teams so that they could deploy witnesses there.

The areas considered to be prone to political conflicts included Surakarta, Pekalongan and Semarang in Central Java; Cirebon and Garut in West Java; Pasuruan and Surabaya in East Java; Makassar in South Sulawesi; and Medan and Palembang in Sumatra, Bambang added.

Gayus Lumbun, who chairs the legal team representing the Megawati-Hasyim Muzadi ticket, said his camp would deploy thousands of monitors to more than 500,000 polling stations across the nation.

Hari Wicaksono, a lawyer for the Susilo-Jusuf Kalla ticket, said his camp would assign one monitor per polling station as well as a number of monitors to witness the returning of counted ballot papers from the polling stations to the KPU offices in Jakarta.

"We have trained them," he added.

Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court said it would settle any disputes related to the Sept. 20 election runoff within six days after Oct. 8.

The KPU is scheduled to announce the final results of the election runoff on Oct. 5. The newly elected president will be sworn in on Oct. 20.

The two candidates are only given three days between Oct. 5 and 8 to file complaints over possible election disputes with the Constitutional Court. Decisions in these cases will be delivered on Oct. 14 or Oct. 15.