Indonesian all set for historic polls

Mon, 05 Apr 2004, 00:00 WIB | Source: JP

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).