Not all parties will contest general election: Expert

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)