Many voters still not registered

Many voters still not registered

JAKARTA (JP): A significant number of people eligible to vote
are still unregistered after the initial nationwide registration
drive, which started on May 1st, ended yesterday.

Spokesman for the Jakarta chapter of the General Election
Committee Toto H. said the local registration officers had left
10 percent of eligible voters in Jakarta unregistered.

"We have registered 4.86 million voters or 90 percent of a
total 5.4 million of voters in Jakarta," he said yesterday.

In Central Java, however, almost all of the eligible voters
have been registered. "We have registered almost one hundred
percent of the voters here," Central Java Governor Soewardi was
quoted by Antara as saying yesterday.

He failed to come up with detailed figures however.

The 20-day pre-registration activity was to register all
Indonesians aged 17 years or older, and teenagers who are already
married, as voters in the general election scheduled for May next
year.

Under the Indonesian electoral system voters will choose their
representatives for local government and the national
legislature.

As the drive approached its end, there were reports of how
large numbers of people were still left unregistered. In East
Java, for instance, thousands of students of some Islamic
boarding schools and universities protested registration officers
who refused to register them because they did not have identity
cards.

Secretary-general of the Ministry of Home Affairs Suryatna
Soebrata, admitted that there were glitches in the registration
activity caused by "technicalities."

"A number of administrative problems appeared in various parts
of the country...they were caused by technicalities and
misunderstandings," he said.

The failure of the officers to register the students sooner,
he said, was because they ran out of four million forms.

He denied allegations that there were political motives behind
the delayed registrations, as the Islamic boarding school
students are traditionally the constituents of the minority
United Development Party.

"We solved the problem by providing four millions forms to
Central Java officers and they registered the students before the
registration period ended. That's all," he said.

Suryatna said that those who are still unregistered will have
their chance in the second phase of registration between June 21
to July 15. He estimated that a total of 119 million people will
be eligible to vote next year. (imn)