Indonesian authorities cooperative: EU observer

Indonesian authorities cooperative: EU observer

JAKARTA (JP): With the country looking forward to what most
people hope will be the most democratic elections ever, the
Indonesian authorities have been cooperative with local and
international observers in their efforts to ensure these hopes
are realized, said a European Union (EU) official.

John Gwyn Morgan, executive coordinator of the EU Election
Observation Unit, said on Thursday foreign observers had the
freedom they needed to closely monitor all stages of this year's
elections.

"I've not found anything except full cooperation from the
Indonesian authorities, who have let our observers monitor the
election stages anywhere," he told The Jakarta Post.

"We have an agreement with the government and the General
Elections Commission (KPU), but our observers are granted freedom
to go anywhere during the election campaign, to closely monitor
the polling booths on the election day and to follow the counting
of the votes as well as the transfer of the votes from villages
to the district sections," he said.

He said the EU will deploy 130 observers to 14 provinces,
including Jakarta. The EU will not send observers to monitor
voting and ballot-counting in the troubled regions of Aceh, East
Timor and Irian Jaya.

"We have been advised by the United Nations not to go to the
troubled regions, especially East Timor."

"We have no other choices but to comply with the UN
suggestion," he said.

However, Morgan insisted that the EU's absence would not mean
it excluded those three regions from its monitoring program.

"We'll cooperate with other international observers and work
closely with local Indonesian observers to fill in the gaps,
especially in open centers and rural areas," he said.

Meanwhile, the official Elections Supervisory Committee on
Thursday announced "indications" of alleged misuse of government
funds and facilities, as well as bureaucrats' partiality, in the
pre-election period. The committee urged Golkar Party and the
People's Sovereignty Party (PDR), which have been targets of the
accusations, to positively respond to the report and make itself
accountable to the public.

"Those under public scrutiny should not see critical reports
as slander," it said in a statement. "Terrorizing people who
supply information on alleged breaches of election laws is
against the commitment to creating a new political order."

Meanwhile coordinator of the University Network for Free
Elections (Unfrel) Todung Mulya Lubis said Thursday that some
130,000 volunteers of the body might lose their voting rights as
election committee officials did not know about a ruling allowing
volunteers to cast their votes at any polling station.

"KPU has actually issued the ruling, but doubted that the
polling committees at provincial and regional levels have copies
of it at hand," he said.

In Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara, a private research team of the
respected Jakarta-based LP3ES reported discrepancies between the
number of voters at villages, subdistricts and districts and the
figures at the provincial elections committee.

Suhardi Surjadi, the head of the team, said the subdistrict
office of Monjok in Mataram town registered 9,570 voters, while
there were only 9,556 voters from the subdistrict registered at
the district office. (imn/edt/49)