Majority of candidates endorsed
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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