Election volunteers now in 22 provinces

Election volunteers now in 22 provinces

JAKARTA (JP): The Independent Election Monitoring Committee
(KIPP) now has volunteers in 62 cities in 22 provinces, its
secretary general, Mulyana W. Kusumah, said on Thursday.

Mulyana told The Jakarta Post that he could not give the total
number of volunteers because registration was still in progress.

In September, Mulyana told reporters that the committee, first
set up to monitor the 1997 elections, had 9,000 volunteers in 47
cities in 14 provinces.

Ideally, Mulyana said, the committee would deploy around
300,000 volunteers to monitor polls in the country's 324
regencies.

"There should be at least 100,000 monitors," he added.

In easily accessed areas, he said, one volunteer could cover
four to five polling stations by using, for example, a
motorcycle, while in remote areas one volunteer per polling
station was needed.

Mulyana, a lecturer at University of Indonesia, said the
committee needed Rp 6 billion to monitor the polls in the
country's regencies in the upcoming election slated for June 7.

Universities have also recently established independent
monitoring networks. One of these watchdogs is the University
Network for a Free and Fair Election, established last month by
universities and colleges in several provinces.

A similar network of universities and colleges will be
established soon, with its main objective to monitor the polls in
Central Java.

"KIPP welcomes the recent establishment of private poll
monitoring groups because in the present relatively open
political situation the role of such bodies is important to
institutionalize democracy," the committee executives said in a
letter to the Post on Thursday.

On Thursday, Mulyana said that donors from Europe and the
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) had
committed an unspecified amount of funds to the committee.

USAID is also enabling the committee to send six of its
volunteers to the Philippines next week to join an apprenticeship
program with the Philippines National Movement for Free
Elections.

Mulyana said another party, the United States-based National
Democratic Institute, was supplying KIPP the funds to establish
branches and training centers, as well as providing technical
assistance to the committee.

Training for monitors has begun in Jakarta and will soon
continue in areas outside the capital.

All training sessions must be completed before March, to give
the committee enough time to finalize preparations for the June 7
poll, Mulyana said.

He added that while the draft of the new election bill
recognizes private poll observers, more details would be needed
to ensure formal acceptance of the monitors.

KIPPs establishment in 1996 was met with reluctance by the
government, and while the committee was not banned, its presence
was not paid attention to, he said.

Mulyana said that the committee had already begun to monitor
the deliberations in the House of Representatives on the new
political laws, including the bill on elections.

Among its activities, KIPP has worked with other groups under
the Consortium of National Legal Reform to draw up alternative
drafts of the political bills.

Further actions will be taken in line with the election
schedule, such as the monitoring of electorate registrations and
the selection by election organizers of which political parties
will be eligible to contest the polls, he said.

Mulyana called on other monitoring networks to work with KIPP
in setting basic standards of what constitutes an election
violation.

The committee was founded by around 40 activists in March
1996, including Goenawan Mohamad, Nurcholish Madjid, Permadi,
Adnan Buyung Nasution and Mulyana. Lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis was
not involved in founding the committee as reported on Thursday.
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