Govt wants earlier elections

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government proposed on Wednesday that next year's general election be held in March and the presidential election in June, three months earlier than planned, so as to avoid stretching out President Megawati Soekarnoputri's term in office.

Minister of Home Affairs Hari Sabarno said that the country should have inaugurated a new president by October, when Megawati's term will end.

"If there is a delay, then the MPR (People's Consultative Assembly) must act," Hari told reporters.

Megawati will be the last president appointed by the MPR, as the country will hold its first direct presidential election ever next year.

Holding a five-year mandate from the MPR, she will have served only three of those years by October 2004. She took over the presidency from Abdurrahman Wahid after he was ousted by the MPR in July 2001, ostensibly for incompetence.

Aside from the direct presidential election, the country will also for the first time directly elect members of the House of Representatives (DPR), instead of voting only for political parties as in the past.

But having two separate elections could prolong Megawati's presidency beyond her mandate.

According to Hari, the final decision whether to extend her mandate will rest with the MPR.

Reform activists favored simultaneous elections to avoid the political parties fixing their presidential candidates based on the number of seats they have in the DPR in a way that would limit voter choice.

But legislators voted down the suggestion, fearing among other things that the future president might lack House support.

It remains to be seen whether legislators will support an election in March as this would cut short their term by three months.

But a more urgent question is whether the General Elections Commission (KPU) would have enough time to prepare for an accelerated election.

Legislators were already two months late when they endorsed the elections law, on which depends much of the KPU's preparations.

A semi-independent body, the KPU is in charge of preparing and organization the general elections. It has frequently reminded the government that it will take two years to organize credible polls.

"The KPU must be prepared for anything, because that's what they've been told to do, and that's their mandate," said Hari when asked whether the KPU would be able to properly organize accelerated elections.

The government submitted the general elections bill to legislators in July last year, around the time when the KPU said it should have begun preparing for the polls.

And the related bills on direct presidential elections and on the composition of the legislative bodies were only submitted earlier this month and last month respectively.

KPU member Chusnul Mar'iyah warned that the truncated schedule would undermine the quality of the polls.

"We could move forward the schedule for the general elections, but it would only produce a mess," she told The Jakarta Post.

She said bringing the elections forward would not be feasible as the KPU would be left with insufficient time to complete much of its work.

The public were also expecting a better performance in the upcoming elections than the one in 1999, she said, and therefore the KPU needed more time to prepare.

Chusnul said the political parties law meant that the KPU would be unable to start registering election participants any earlier than September.

The law further set a January 2004 deadline for the KPU to vet the candidates. Under the government's March election proposal, it would then have only two months to print the ballot papers and distribute them throughout the country.

In fact, it would take two months just to produce the final list of the candidates after vetting, Chusnul explained.

She added that the commission also had to register eligible electors from among Indonesia's population of around 215 million, as well as train returning and polling station officials.