KPU to increase House seats for Maluku

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

In response to complaints over the House of Representatives seats allocation in several provinces, the General Elections Commission (KPU) is slated to provide Maluku with an extra seat, at the expense of West Nusa Tenggara.

The extra seat will increase the House seats up for grabs in the 2004 general election in Maluku from three to four, and reduce the seats in West Nusa Tenggara from 11 to 10, KPU deputy chairman Ramlan Surbakti said on Thursday.

KPU, he added, looks to make no changes in the House seats allocation in Papua and North Sumatra, which will have 10 and six seats at stake respectively.

Ramlan said the KPU was attempting to set the number of House seats at 550 in accordance with the general election law. The demands for more seats had prompted KPU to ask the House to revise the election law so as to allow it to increase the seats to 560.

"The commission thinks it is unfair for Maluku to have as many seats as the new province of North Maluku, which is once part of Maluku territory," Ramlan said.

He said the KPU would immediately announce the House seats allocation, but no date had been set.

Political parties in Maluku as well as their representatives at the House have filed complaints with the KPU for allocating the province with just three House seats for the 2004 election, equal the seats to be given to two-year-old North Maluku.

Maluku was allocated six seats in the 1999 election.

Legislators from Papua and North Sulawesi also filed the same complaints with KPU as they have their seat allocation cut due to regional split. West Irian Jaya will take three seats from Papua, while Gorontalo will shave three seats off North Sulawesi.

Ramlan also said the commission had decided to withdraw its previous radiogram to its offices in all provinces, regencies and municipalities (KPUDs) that allows them to verify membership cards issued by political parties.

"The radiogram is not in line with the KPU instruction that instructs KPU in regencies/municipalities to directly visit the party members. Therefore we withdraw it," he said.

He said the radiogram was sent due to concern over limited time to carry out factual screening.

Provincial and regency/municipal KPUs must finish their field verification by Nov. 20, and report the results to the KPU by the end of November.

KPU will announce parties eligible to run for the 2004 election on Dec. 2.

Ramlan said the new radiogram was sent on Thursday and asked all KPUDs that had conducted factual verification based on the previous radiogram to restart their screening.

According to him, KPU offices in Nganjuk in East Java and several others in West Sumatra would have to restart their factual verification.