Indonesian all set for historic polls
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Millions of Indonesians are set to cast their votes on Monday, which for the first time will be cast directly for over 7,000 candidates for the legislative bodies at the national, provincial, regental and municipal levels. A total of 148,000,369 registered voters will also select 128 candidates for a new upper house of the national legislature called the Regional Representatives Council.
April 5 will see the country's ninth election since 1955, and will be followed by the presidential election set for July 5, and a runoff in September if neither of the top two candidates manages to get a majority of the votes cast.
The government decided on Friday that the legislative elections, the first to take place this election year, would go ahead as planned on April 5 despite various shortcomings, except in remote areas pending the arrival of the required election materials.
On Sunday, General Elections Commission (KPU) chairman Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin said that in Papua province, the KPU would "likely fail to hold the polls simultaneously" as preparations in at least nine regencies were not complete.
Nazaruddin said the latest operation to distribute election materials, this time covering Maluku, North Maluku and South Sulawesi, was expected to ensure their arrival by 9 p.m. Delayed elections can be held by the latest on April 19, or 14 days after April 5, KPU officials said.
Fears of disturbances on Monday are now mostly centered on the fact that an unknown number of people will be denied their right to vote, mainly because the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) failed to register them.
Many among those who were registered have not received their voter registration cards while several foreigners and people who have moved to other areas have been issued with the blue cards. The cards were issued even to youngsters and the dead, as happened in Sampang, Madura and East Java.
As of late on Sunday, residents of 32 provinces from Aceh to Papua were putting the final touches to nearly 600,000 polling stations, regardless of whether they had received all the allotted funds from the KPU, reports said. Television stations also aired last minute information broadcasts on the intricacies of how to vote, which ballots were valid and the tasks of the election officials, who will be hard at work from morning until the finish of ballot counting in the evening.
Members of local polling station committees are also bracing for protests about unregistered voters. In East Jakarta, a committee head threatened to resign following a circular from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) urging supporters to come to the polling stations even if they were not registered, Antara reported on Sunday.
A deputy to the secretary-general of the PDI-P, Pramono Anung, said the party had only "appealed" to unregistered supporters to immediately report to local committees and to try to talk the authorities into letting them vote even if they were not registered.
The KPU had given until Saturday for unregistered voters to report to local committees.
In Yogyakarta, thousands of ballot papers would not be used, local authorities said, as it turned out that many registered voters were students who had moved to the city from their home villages.
The decision to allow delayed elections in a number of areas has drawn criticism from various sides.
This could be used to manipulate results or declare the results invalid, Golkar deputy chairman Agung Laksono said on Sunday. He called on the public to monitor the processing of electoral data at all levels. Golkar has also deployed its members at polling stations, paying them between Rp 25,000 and Rp 100,000, he said.
Co-founder of the National Awakening Party (PKB) Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid demanded that President Megawati Soekarnoputri and Nazaruddin publicly apologize for the failures that had occurred in the poll preparations.
He made the demand after a closed-door meeting of representatives from eight political parties at the PKB offices on Saturday evening. They said they "rejected" the government regulation in lieu of a law that allowed the elections to be delayed in certain areas.
Apart from the PKB, the party was also attended by representatives of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the Freedom Bull National Party (PNBK), the Freedom Party (Partai Merdeka) the Pioneers' Party (Partai Pelopor), the Marhaenisme Indonesian National Party (PNI Marhaenisme), the Reform Star Party (PBR) and the Democratic Party (Partai Demokrat).
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