Europe sending observers for the elections
JAKARTA (JP): The European Union (EU) will send 120 observers to watch over the June 7 election in the country, the head of the mission said on Thursday.
EU chief observer John Gwyn Morgan told a media conference that the European Community wished "to assist Indonesia in holding a free, fair and transparent election process".
Some 130 million people will go to the polls to elect 462 legislators of the House of Representatives (DPR). The remaining 38 House seats have been reserved for military and police, according to the elections law passed late in February.
Morgan said that 30 of the observers arrived last week and had been deployed to 13 provinces. They will stay there between 45 and 75 days to monitor the whole electoral process until the final vote tallies are published.
Areas where the European observers would be based include the state capital, Yogyakarta, Semarang, Surabaya, Medan, Pekanbaru, Padang, Palembang, Bandar Lampung, Denpasar, Sumbawa, Samarinda and Ujungpandang.
Morgan said another group of 90 observers will arrive May 29 and will be on duty for some 15 days on or around election day.
He added that there will be a total of 350 foreign observers to watch over the elections.
Morgan acknowledged EU's limitations in planning for the monitoring process and accepted that it would need to rely on information from domestic poll watchdogs.
"We have a problem because of the sheer size of Indonesia. To cover Indonesia and say we had a feel for how the election really went could not be done with the number of observers we have on our team," Morgan said.
"We could not, of course, cover anything like enough ground," he said.
With 350 foreign observers, there will be one for every 371,000 voters in the elections.
Morgan said that the EU has made available an approximate US$7.7 million support package, which has been channeled through the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
"The deployment of the observers will be closely coordinated with other international observer groups in order to maximize impact and the geographical spread of the international observation as a whole," he said.
Former U.S. ambassador to Indonesia Paul Wolfowitz said last month that the Washington-based International Republican Institute (IRI) would probably send around 30 or 35 observers.
He added that the Democratic Party would also send a delegation of about 40 to 50 observers led by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.
Separately, in the West Sumatra capital of Padang, Antara reported that two Australian observers conducted preelection monitoring jobs from Monday to Wednesday. (byg)