New bill tightens rules on election contestants
Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The country's highest electoral authority said on Thursday it would soon submit a new bill to the House of Representatives that would impose tighter requirements for those of the country's more than 300 political parties wishing to contest the general election in 2004.
Mulyana W. Kusumah, a member of the General Election Commission (KPU), could not say, however, when the bill would be submitted to the House for deliberation.
He said the bill would require any party contesting the election to have branches in at least two-thirds of the country's 32 provinces and in two-thirds of the regencies in each of the provinces in which it had a presence.
"In addition to that, each political party must be able to prove that it has at least 1,000 members by showing their membership cards to the KPU," Mulyana, head of the commission's political party section, told The Jakarta Post.
He said that under the bill, it would not be overly easy for political parties to meet the requirements for eligibility to take part in the 2004 elections.
Under the current Law No. 2/1999 on general elections, election contestants are obliged to have branches in only half of the total number of provinces and in half of the regencies in these provinces.
Earlier on Thursday, Minister of Justice and Human Rights Yusril Ihza Mahendra said that some 300 new political parties, besides the 48 ones that contested the 1999 election, had registered with his office to take part in the next national poll.
Mulyana said that this came as no surprise because under the current regulations, a group of only 50 people could set up a political party to contest an election after the relevant documents had been formalized by a notary public.
He said that in future all parties would have to pass the KPU's verification process, which would determine whether they were eligible to take part the 2004 poll or not.
"It's not so easy for a new party to have branches in 22 provinces, and in every province it must have branches in two- thirds of the municipalities or regencies," Mulyana pointed out.
Mulyana said the KPU wanted to be given sufficient time to verify such a large number of new political parties. "We hope that the experience of 1999, when the KPU was given only one month to verify the political parties, will not be repeated," he said.
He added that ideally, the next national election would be contested by only 20 parties.
Mulyana said that at least six of the 48 political parties contesting the 1999 election were expected to be eligible to take part in the next poll.
These parties included the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the Golkar Party, the National Awakening Party (PKB), the United Development Party (PPP), the National Mandate Party (PAN), and the Crescent and Star Party (PBB), he said.
Mulyana explained that the KPU's legal draftsmen had also completed two other political bills, namely a bill on political parties and a bill on the structure and status of the House of Representatives and the People's Consultative Assembly.
The bills had been forwarded to the Ministry of Home Affairs for a final check before being submitted to the House for deliberation, he added.