Foreign observers gear up for poll runoff
The Jakarta Post Jakarta
Two foreign agencies officially registered to monitor the presidential election runoff have arrived here to observe the poll from the opening until vote counting.
The Atlanta-based Carter Center said in a statement made available to The Jakarta Post on Wednesday that it would deploy a team of 57 personnel for the mission.
The team, led by Ambassador Douglas Peterson, will witness the poll opening, balloting and vote counting at numerous polling stations in 21 of the country's 32 provinces.
Peterson served as the first post-war U.S. ambassador to Vietnam after serving three terms as representative of Florida's 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House.
David Carroll, interim director of the Center's Democracy Program, said that the deployment of the monitoring team shows the significance of the country's election runoff on Sept. 20, 2004.
"The presence of international observers is an important demonstration of the interest of the international community in supporting Indonesia's democratization." he said.
Carroll said that the final round of the presidential poll would be the last in a series of important elections in Indonesia this year, providing Indonesia citizens with their first opportunity to directly elect their president.
The Center deployed 60 observers for the first round of the presidential election on July 5, led by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and former Thai prime minister Chuan Leekpai.
The Carter Center has had 14 long-term observers based throughout Indonesia since May 2004 to monitor and assess the electoral process and political environment.
The center was founded in 1982 by Carter and Rosalynn in partnership with Emory University to advance the causes of peace and public health worldwide.
Another independent foreign poll monitoring team, the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU-EOM), said on Wednesday that 125 observers had arrived in Jakarta from Europe to begin their observation mission in Indonesia.
"The observers will be deployed in all the country's provinces where they will meet our long-term observers who have done their work since September last year," EU-EOM chief observer Glyn Ford said in a separate statement.
He said the observers would monitor the whole electoral process from the opening of polling stations through to the vote counting.
The EU-EOM mission consists of 65 long-time observers, 125 short-term members and 18 officials assigned by embassies of EU- member countries in Jakarta, as well as a team of experts.
The EU had also deployed many observers to monitor the first round of the presidential election and the legislative elections in all the country's 32 provinces, which Ford described as "one of the most complex elections in the world".
The EU-EOM is the biggest foreign election monitoring team in Indonesia.