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)