Not all parties will contest general election: Expert

JAKARTA (JP): The newly found greater political freedom allows anyone to establish a political party but the political laws being drafted will apply tight screening procedures so that not all of the parties will be able to contest the general election, an expert says.

Political expert A. Ramelan Surbakti, who is a member of the government's team in charge of drafting the laws on political parties and general elections, pointed out the main reason was because Indonesia was not applying a multiparty system.

"It's easy to set up a party now, just ask for the notarial documents and register the party with the Ministry of Home Affairs," Surbakti was quoted by Antara as saying in Semarang, Central Java, yesterday.

To contest the poll, however, a party will need to have 14 provincial chapters, and 154 branches at regency level. Indonesia has 27 provinces and 243 regencies. In addition, its membership must be at least one percent of the country's population of eligible voters, according to Surbakti, who is a professor of political science at Airlangga University in Surabaya, East Java.

The electoral committee will check a party's claim of membership by a random sampling method. If the claim is found to be groundless the committee will undertake further checks. It will bar the party from contesting the poll if it again fails the screening test.

"This doesn't mean that parties which do not make it to the list of poll contestants will be dissolved. Maximal efforts will be made so they can still obtain seats in the House of Representatives," he said.

Parties which make it to the ballot paper must win at least 10 percent of the total available seats in order to ensure participation in the next election, he said.

According to Surbakti, the political laws being drafted will ensure that the poll be held independently and monitored by a poll watch committee consisting of representatives from the bureaucracy, neutral observers, and the poll contestants.

"The next general election will be held in a very open and honest manner. For that, poll judges will be established, and their role will be like the supervision committees in the Old Order (under president Sukarno) era. They will monitor and make correction, but also impose sanctions on violators of poll rules," he said.

The bills are also likely to stipulate that election results be announced, in regions, 15 days after the poll, while on the national scale, they should be announced within a month. (swe)