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)