Legislators urged to simulate election

Legislators urged to simulate election

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Activists from non-governmental organizations (NGO) have urged
the House of Representatives to start making practical
preparations for the general election to test the applicability
of the election bill.

Adi Abidin, a senior official of The Asia Foundation said the
preparations could help avoid any possible errors in the 2004
election.

One main difficulty is implementing an article of the bill
which specifies that every political party could propose twice as
many candidates as there are contested seats, he said citing
article 24 of the government-proposed election bill.

"Assuming there will be 50 parties to participate at the next
poll. If one district, for instance East Java, has a quota of 20
seats, each party can propose 40 candidates. Thus, there will be
2,000 candidates for the entire 50 parties. Can you imagine
including all the candidates plus their photographs on a ballot
paper? The ballot papers would be very thick if you included all
of them," Adi told The Jakarta Post.

It would also take a long time for one voter to scrutinize the
ballot paper before they made a choice, he said.

There were 48 parties contesting the 1999 General Election and
more parties are likely to join the 2004 election.

Such a large number of candidates would open a way for
political parties to bribe potential legislative candidates, he
added.

"That's why we need to prepare the election bill article not
just write it," he said, noting that legislators couldn't
belittle any single article in the election bill. (iwa/edt)