Govt to stand by result of party screening
Govt to stand by result of party screening
Moch. N. Kurniawan and Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post,
Jakarta
The government will not accede to requests from parties that did
not qualify as political groupings to reverse the screening
results, an official said Sunday.
Zulkarnaen Yusuf, the director general of legal administration
at the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, said that most, if
not all, of the 34 parties that did not pass the third and last
screening did not have required number of branch offices in
provinces and regencies.
In some cases, parties had no offices, while verification
officials from the ministry also discovered several cases of
double leadership, he said.
"We will show the 34 parties that they failed to meet the
requirements as political parties," Zulkarnaen told The Jakarta
Post on Sunday.
The Justice and Human Rights Ministry announced on Saturday
that only 32 out of 66 parties screened in the third and last
phase met the requirements for registration as political parties.
Under the prevailing law, a party has to have branch offices
in 50 percent of provinces, 50 percent of the
regencies/municipalities in those provinces, and 25 percent of
the total subdistricts in those regencies.
Indonesia has 32 provinces and 416 regencies/municipalities.
With the last 32 parties passing the ministry's screening, a
total of 50 parties are entitled to register with the National
Elections Commission (KPU) to be screened as contestants for the
2004 elections. Nine of them have already registered with the
KPU.
At least three of the 34 parties that failed the screening are
to hand over the necessary evidence to the ministry to prove that
they should qualify.
"We are going to hear the ministry's explanation on Monday as
to why we failed to pass the screening. We will provide the
ministry with proof that we should have passed the screening,"
said Bambang Sulistomo, chairman of the Indonesian Nationalist
Alliance Party.
According to Bambang, his party would still demand that the
government revise the outcome of the screening if his party could
prove that the ministry had made mistakes in the screening
process.
He said his party had branch offices in 21 provinces, thus
passing the requirement set by the law.
Bambang said he was not going to sue the ministry as this
would take too long whereas a party had to register with the KPU
on Oct. 9 at the latest to be included in the verification
process as a contestant in the 2004 election.
The Reform Mandate Party and the United People's Opposition
Party (POPOR) also claimed they should have passed the
verification stage as they had fulfilled all the requirements for
recognition as a political party.
M. Dulwatin, the president of the Reform Mandate Party, said
his party should have qualified as it had branch offices in 24
provinces.
Unfortunately, the ministry had not yet checked all the
provinces, according to Dulwatin.
Dulwatin also questioned Yusril's advice to disappointed
parties to challenge his ministry's decision in court.
"We are not afraid, but we might run out of time as court
proceedings can take years," he said.
POPOR secretary-general Yusuf Lakaseng said his party would
meet with ministry officials on Monday to question them about the
ministry's decision that his party had failed the screening.
He argued that his party, which had 18 branch offices, should
have qualified, saying that the ministry had undertaken unfair
practices in verifying his party.
For example, he said, hoodlums in Banten had intimidated his
party officials in the new province not to reveal themselves as
POPOR officials. Thus, the ministry officials had not been able
to properly verify his party there.
In other areas, the ministry's officials came earlier than
they had promised, so that not all of his party officials
had met with the verification officials.
"So there have been systematic attempts to stop our party from
contesting the 2004 elections. We will not beg the ministry to
allow us to compete in next year's election," he said.