General election to be on April 5 next year: KPU

General election to be on April 5 next year: KPU

Arya Abhiseka, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

After much anticipation, the General Elections Commission (KPU)
announced on Friday that the general elections will be held April
5, 2004.

KPU chairman Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin said April 5 would be a
national holiday, allowing voters to miss work and make it to
polling booths across the nation.

"It has been finalized for April 5. On that day we will hold
the legislative election," he said.

He said his commission had picked the date after reviewing
several technical issues, in particular the expected weather
conditions across the country.

"The weather factor in the eastern part of the country played
a major role in our decision, as ballot counting would be
difficult to accomplish in those areas during the monsoon season
between January and March," he said.

KPU also took into account its agreement with the Central
Bureau of Statistics on moving the voter registration deadline
back to December.

"We have adjusted our time line for the elections preparations
based on those factors," he said.

KPU, however, is still unable to set a date for the two-stage
direct presidential and vice presidential elections, with the
deliberation of the presidential elections bill by the House of
Representatives not even begun yet.

There is skepticism about whether Indonesia will have a new
president and vice president by October of next year, when the
term of the current President and Vice President ends.

Requiring sufficient time to prepare for the presidential
election, Nazaruddin called on the House to discuss and approve
the bill on presidential elections soon.

"We have a concept of the presidential election, but we still
need the legitimacy of the bill on presidential elections before
beginning preparations. We can only hope that the bill will be
passed soon," he said.

Nazaruddin said that in the coming weeks the KPU would focus
on setting up provincial and regency-level KPUs by the end of
May.

The establishment of provincial and regency-level KPUs is
instrumental in the next step of verifying which political
parties are eligible to contest the general election.

Currently, there are over 230 political parties hoping to
contest the elections.

But they must make it through a two-stage verification
process, to be conducted by the Ministry of Justice and Human
Rights and the KPU, before being allowed to take part in the
elections.

The party registration process at the justice ministry began
in January and runs until October of this year. This process will
be more complicated than during the last elections because of the
larger number of political parties.

As a comparison, during the last general election in 1999, 141
parties registered with the ministry and 48 qualified to contest
the polls.

The KPU, fearful that any delays will push back the general
election, has urged the justice ministry to speed up the
verification process.