Foreign observers or tourists?

Foreign observers or tourists?

By Hermawan Sulistyo

JAKARTA (JP); General elections in countries undergoing
democratization are often, if not always, marred by cheating and
structural violations. To minimize the degree of violations, and
hence to increase the quality of democratization, many countries
open their doors to foreign observers to help monitor the
elections. The recent Indonesian elections are not an exception.
For a variety of reasons, ranging from high hopes that fair
elections would guarantee a return of international confidence
for new business investments, to external pressures, the
government not only opened its doors, but even invited some
observers from various countries to monitor the 1999 elections.

Foreign observers are an additional force, and an effective
one, to their domestic counterparts. Lacking expertise on
election monitoring -- only the Independent Election Monitoring
Committee (KIPP) had experience with the 1997 elections -- many,
if not most domestic and local organizations warmly received
these more experienced foreign observers. But there were also
some negative aspects to their presence here.

Domestic monitoring committees adopt different checklists. The
Rectors Forum uses a longer list of items to fill (over 70
items), while KIPP uses a shorter checklist. The first checklist,
however, does not include open-ended questions, and is therefore
easier to count violations in matrices, while the second
checklist, though harder to tabulate, has open-ended items and
therefore provides a narrative of incidents.

Most foreign observers do not reveal their standard checklists
to their domestic and local counterparts. It is understandable,
since they use their checklists more for internal purposes. But
without agreed parameters concerning the democratic degree of
fairness and justice of election processes, these foreign
observers add to the potential of conflicting results from
domestic observers. A recent KIPP statement on the excessive
number of violations uncovered over 120,000 cases. This factor,
together with the refusal of political parties to agree on
results of the count in various places, are only counter-
propositions against a premature statement issued by the Carter
Center one day after the ballot that the elections were
relatively fair and democratic.

The focus of foreign observers on the electoral process was
one reason, among several put forward, that overseas poll
watchers arrived at a "better conclusion". Foreign observers paid
attention only to the degree of violations during the campaign
period and on the ballot day. Most, if not all foreign observers
left their observation areas after counting of votes at the
polling place, or TPS, the site of the lowest level of counting.
Above this level are four more stages which add the results from
counting at the first level. These adding processes occur at the
village (PPS), subdistrict (PPK), regency or mayoralty (PPD II)
and provincial (PPD I) levels. Reports have shown that cheating
mostly took place at these four levels, not at polling places.

My own field experience in South Sulawesi confirmed the
potential for cheating during the counting process above the
polling place level and below the provincial result level.
Several factors contributed to this potential for deception.
Police were not assigned to guard and protect ballot boxes after
the materials were brought to the PPS, PPK, PPD II and PPD I. All
active participants at the polling places were exhausted after
the ballot; some TPS did not finish their count until late in the
night. The number of local volunteer poll watchers was inadequate
to monitor count results from polling places during the four
stages. Foreign observers left the areas after they found
relatively fair voting practices. Finally, domestic observers had
no access to data transferred by election committees using the
BRI banking system.

Adding to the complicated implications arising from premature
statements made by foreign observers, was their very presence. A
team of foreign observers in South Sulawesi sparked local
controversy over the role of foreign observers. Local poll watch
volunteers alleged that at least two observers abused their
monitoring powers. The reported acts of impropriety included
borrowing and using mobile phones of local volunteers, using
telephone and computer facilities at the local monitoring office,
and requesting data before collecting their own field data. The
KIPP local office later barred the observers from observing.
Forbes, or Forum Bersama, a group of journalists working for
various media also reported similar incidents; they also rejected
the presence of these two foreign observers.

There were also discouraging reports about foreign observers
wishing to monitor the elections in Tana Toraja and Malino, two
tourist resort areas. It was reported that the observers
requested the local office of a monitoring committee pay their
hotel bills. The demands allegedly created an uneasy environment,
as the observers told local volunteers that their domestic
counterparts received international funding. On one night, a
reporter even claimed to have seen a car with the logo of a
monitoring team parked on Jalan Nusantara, a red-light district
in Ujungpandang. Some local volunteers said, "Every time they are
here, all they do is cut their nails and disturb our work because
they are using our computer."

Money is a crucial issue. Different volunteer deployment
systems adopted by local monitoring committees have caused
serious problems. KIPP adopted a system of local recruitment and
thus bore reduced transportation costs, while the other two
monitoring committees -- the Rectors Forum and Unfrel --
dispatched volunteers from big cities. After comparing their
honoraria, a KIPP volunteer received Rp 25,000 or less than four
dollars, while volunteers from other committees received several
times more than this amount. Some KIPP volunteers protested to
their local boards, accusing the boards of cutting their
honorarium. Adding to the inconsistencies was a perception on the
conditions that foreign observers worked under. Foreign observers
stayed in fancy hotels and rented (or bought?) comfortable cars.

Foreign observers definitely had their own motives in
monitoring the 1999 elections. The motives could be
philanthropic: that this is an important time for the fourth
largest country in the world to take necessary steps toward a
democratic society. Other motives might include financial, or
even for the adventure. They came, stayed for a while (sometimes
even a week), watched the elections, enjoyed luxurious trips and
told us whether the elections had been performed properly or not.
Now, some of these "political tourists" have returned home, or
probably gone to another monitoring project in another country,
while we still have to deal with demands for reelections in some
constituencies.

The writer is executive director of the Research Institute for
Democracy and Peace. (RIDeP).