Majority of candidates endorsed

JAKARTA (JP): The National Election Committee approved the provisional list of 2,293 legislature candidates for next year's general election yesterday after rejecting 257 -- or 10 percent -- of the nominees proposed by the three official political groupings.

Chairman of the National Screening Committee Sutoyo N.K. announced in a meeting that the committee had rejected 130 candidates from the United Development Party (PPP), 21 Golkar candidates and 106 candidates from the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI).

Part of the mandatory screening procedure, conducted by the special committee which included representatives of the internal security agency, Bakorstanas, was to weed out those with past communist links.

Sutoyo, however, said that most of the rejected nominees had failed to meet the deadline for various administrative matters.

"Some of them failed to produce complete documents and others failed to meet the Nov. 30 deadline," he said.

In addition to proof that the nominees had no links with outlawed organizations, they also had to produce statements of a clean bill of mental and physical health from doctors.

Each political organization is permitted to submit a maximum of 850 candidates for next year's election. The figure is twice the number of House of Representatives seats up for grabs; the remaining 75 House seats are reserved for the Armed Forces, whose members do not vote.

Attending yesterday's meeting were Chairman of the National Election Committee Moch. Yogie S.M., who is also Minister of Home Affairs, deputy chairman Oetojo Oesman, committee member Joop Ave and chairman of the Official Election Monitoring Committee Singgih.

Also present at the meeting were PPP Chairman Ismail Hasan Metareum and Secretary-General Tosari Wijaya, Golkar Chairman Harmoko and Secretary-General Ary Mardjono, and Chairman of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) Soerjadi and his secretary- general, Buttu R. Hutapea.

Sutoyo said the list of candidates would be made public from Jan. 20 to Feb. 18, 1997.

He said the public could file their objections against listed candidates to the national election committee.

In his speech, Yogie said the endorsed list did not guarantee that all of the candidates would be included in the final list of candidates for the 1997-2002 House membership.

"The final list will be determined after the Election Committee obtains and examines complaints from the public," he said.

All eligible Indonesians are to cast their votes next May 29 to elect their representatives in the House, provincial legislatures and regency level councils.

Rejection

Tosari Wijaya, Harmoko and Soerjadi all said they did not have details on why some of their candidates were rejected.

"I cannot remember the candidates one by one. One thing is for sure, 44 of the 130 rejected nominees failed to get Bakorstanas statements stating that they were free from any links with outlawed parties," Tosari said.

He criticized the screening committee for failing three PPP candidates from Yogyakarta.

The three candidates were all civil servants who are supposed to be loyal to the ruling Golkar. They were Fauzi A.R. Fachruddin, a doctor at the Yogyakarta General Hospital; Toha Abdurrahman, a lecturer from the Sunan Kalijaga State Institute of Islamic Studies; and Jalaludin.

Harmoko said he only knew that 12 of the rejected Golkar candidates came from East Java, seven from Central Java, one from Yogyakarta and the last one from East Nusa Tenggara.

Soerjadi said that 75 of the 106 PDI candidates rejected by the screening committee failed to produce all of the required documents.

He insisted, however, that the candidates were not rejected because of any political reasons.

Golkar has swept each general election held since 1971. In the last poll, in 1992, Golkar won 67.96 percent of the registered 97,231,990 votes, PPP won 17 percent and PDI received nearly 15 percent of the vote. (imn)

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