Govt mulls delaying elections in Aceh

JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Home Affairs Syarwan Hamid said on Wednesday the government was mulling the possibility of delaying elections in the province of Aceh for security reasons.

"There is a possibility the elections in (Pidie, North Aceh and East Aceh) will be delayed for security reasons," Syarwan said after inaugurating the Center for Government and Political Ethics Studies here.

Pidie, North Aceh and East Aceh are the three regencies in Aceh which suffered the most during a decade-long military operation against separatist rebels which ended last year.

Calls for a referendum on self-determination and an election boycott have increased in the three regencies and other areas in the province since the military shot and killed at least 41 people in the North Aceh village of Krueng Geukueh on May 3.

The military has said residents are being intimidated by separatist members to boycott the elections.

"It will be impossible to hold elections if people there do not feel safe," Syarwan, former Lilawangsa military commander overseeing security in the three regencies, said.

The head of the Aceh Elections Committee, Ahmad Farhan Hamid, told The Jakarta Post from the provincial capital of Banda Aceh on Wednesday that some 58 percent of the province's 2.3 million eligible voters had registered for the elections.

Ahmad, however, said only 13.6 percent, 22.5 percent and 61 percent of the voters had registered in Pidie, North Aceh and East Aceh, respectively.

"In those three areas, especially in North Aceh and Pidie, you can barely see campaign activities," Ahmad said.

"We leave it to the KPU (General Elections Commission) to decide whether the elections will be held in those areas," he said, adding that a number of KPU officials will visit the province later this week.

Ahmad earlier said the 40 political parties registered in Aceh would not campaign in areas where there were safety concerns.

Party officials were attacked in several areas of Aceh last week and at least three cars were set on fire.

Meanwhile, the General Elections Commission announced on Wednesday that voter registration in a number of the country's troubled and remote provinces had been extended to June 6, or one day before the elections.

The move applies to the disputed territory of East Timor, as well as the troubled provinces of Aceh, Maluku and Irian Jaya, KPU chairman Rudini said.

Rudini said voters in these areas had found it difficult to visit registration booths.

As of Wednesday, the number of registered voters in the country's 27 provinces reached 112,555,344, or 88.22 percent of the total number of eligible voters, he said.

East Timor, with 43.90 percent of eligible voters registered, is the only province where at least half the eligible voters had not registered, while Central Sulawesi, a stronghold of the ruling Golkar Party, had the highest number of eligible voters registered with 95.54 percent, KPU figures showed.

Rudini also said KPU had accredited 53 of the 114 Indonesian monitoring agencies which had applied to oversee voting, while 14 foreign agencies had also been accredited.

In the South Sulawesi capital of Ujungpandang, a volunteer from the local office of the Independent Elections Monitoring Committee (KIPP) was killed in a hit-and-run accident on Tuesday. Colleagues have called for an investigation to be launched to determine whether the incident was politically-motivated.

Anwar, the local KIPP leader, told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday that Azis Sila, 25, was killed when returning from monitoring the campaign in Takalar regency, some 45 kilometers south of the provincial capital, where he was hit by an unidentified motorist.

He said Azis died at Pattassalang General Hospital at about 3 p.m.

"We still cannot confirm whether the incident was related to his work as a poll monitor," Anwar said, adding that his office would set up a team to investigate the matter.

He said a number of volunteers had been threatened by unidentified people since last month.

Anwar also said that one of the volunteer, Andi Satria, 24, was injured after a local in Selayar regency, some 460 kilometers south of Ujungpandang, stabbed him on May 14.

Baspur, the alleged attacker, is still at large and local KIPP officials have said the attack was politically motivated.

Anwar said there were some 300 volunteers now working for KIPP in the province.

Noted criminologist Mulyana W. Kusumah established KIPP to monitor the 1997 elections and the organization has often been critical of the government.

KIPP said on Monday that government officials, a number of political parties and their supporters had violated the law on elections as well as the KPU's decree on campaigning since the campaign began on May 19. (27/byg/edt/rms)