Elections body membership valid until 2003: Syarwan

JAKARTA (JP): The government gave its guarantee on Thursday that all 53 members of the General Elections Commission (KPU) would serve their full terms until 2003.

Minister of Home Affairs Syarwan Hamid said the General Election Law did not suggest that KPU members whose parties failed to win 2 percent of the House of Representatives seats would be expelled from the commission.

"The government's decision is clear. We will always abide by the laws and regulations," he told reporters before a meeting of the Council for the Enforcement of Security and Law (DPKSH) at the Bina Graha presidential office on Thursday.

"As long as there is no change in the law, everything will remain the same," he said.

Syarwan was commenting on a dispute in the KPU, which surfaced after two government representatives in the commission, Adnan Buyung Nasution and Andi A. Mallarangeng, said representatives of minor parties should not retain their membership in the commission.

"Adnan Buyung Nasution and Andi Mallarangeng spoke as individuals, not in their capacity as government officials," Syarwan said.

Nasution and Mallarangeng were boycotted by other KPU members in Wednesday's plenary session following their remarks. The angry commission members also demanded that their two colleagues, who refused to apologize for their statements, resign.

The 1999 General Election Law stipulates that membership in the commission is valid for a four-year period. KPU consists of representatives of 48 parties contesting the June elections plus five government appointees.

Syarwan, however, reiterated that parties unable to meet the minimum requirement of House seats would be barred from the next elections.

A total of 462 House seats were up for grabs in the June 7 polls, with the remaining 38 reserved for the Indonesian Military and police, whose members do not vote.

Many parties have protested the ruling on minimum seat earnings and threatened to reject the polls unless the regulation is lifted.

Syarwan said any plan to change the law should be addressed to the next House.

"The government cannot give any commitment about the changes at all," he said.

Settlement

The internal dispute within the KPU was settled on Thursday after the warring camps agreed to withdraw their previous statements that were considered insulting.

KPU chairman Rudini told reporters after chairing a meeting to break the ice that the dispute stemmed from a misunderstanding between the two factions.

"Everything is clear now. There are no more problems concerning the statement of Adnan Buyung Nasution and Andi Mallarangeng," Rudini said in a media conference at the KPU secretariat.

He said both camps had agreed to stop making accusations at each other.

"There are no more allegations that the tiny parties have held up the start of the national vote count. Neither are there demands for Bang Buyung and Saudara Mallarangeng to be thrown out of the commission," Rudini said.

He accused the media of fanning the quarrel by misquoting his earlier statement to suggest that political parties failing to gain the minimum number of House seats would no longer be allowed to sit in the commission.

"What I really said was that I was ready to quit from the KPU if my party, the MKGR Party, fails to meet the requirement," he said.

Vote-counting slowed further on Thursday, with less than one million votes added during the day to bring the total votes counted by 7.30 p.m. to just over 62 million, or 52 percent of registered voters.

PDI-Perjuangan still leads with 36 percent of the vote, followed by Golkar with 18.6 percent and PKB with 17.7 percent. PPP and PAN collected 9.8 and 6.8 percent respectively.

With the latest count, Golkar and PKB secured one more DPR seat each on Thursday. Golkar's seat came from South Sulawesi while PKB's was in West Java.

PDI-Perjuangan is ahead nationwide with 65 DPR seats in its hands, Golkar and PKB are neck-and-neck with 31 a piece, PPP is third with 14 seats, PAN has nine and PBB one seat.

By Thursday, 152 of the 462 contested DPR seats in the 27 provinces had been distributed, on the basis of having met the minimum number of votes necessary to obtain a seat in each province. (imn/prb/emb)