Parties strive to meet deadline
Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
All 24 parties contesting this April's polls managed to submit their revised candidature documents on Monday to the General Elections Commission (KPU), but only thanks to the commission's leniency.
The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the National Mandate Party (PAN), the Social Democratic Labor Party (PBSD), the Indonesian Unity Party (PSI), the United Democratic Nationhood Party (PPDK), and the Democratic Party only managed to get their documents in between five and 10 minutes after the 4 p.m. deadline.
"We admit that several parties handed in the revised documents after 4 p.m, but we decided to accept them as we do not want to be too tough on them," KPU member Anas Urbaningrum, who chairs the team verifying the candidates, told a press conference.
Head of the PDI-P secretariat, Ariabima Prihastoto, was spotted asking the KPU deputy chairman, Ramlan Surbakti, to allow him to file some documents almost two hours after the deadline at 5:40 p.m. Ramlan refused to accept the documents.
A number of party officials who were late tried to negotiate with KPU staff and police officers, who locked the verification room on the second floor of the KPU building on Jl. Imam Bonjol, Central Jakarta, at 4 p.m. sharp.
The latecomers even shoved some documents under the door of the verification room. Some others ran to a room next door, attempting to submit their documents via friends who were with the KPU verification team inside.
"I left my party's offices at 12 noon to head here, but I was still late as I came by public transportation," a sweating PBSD official said.
Anas said that the slightly late acceptance of the documents was not a serious threat to the principles governing the nomination of legislative candidates.
The KPU will allow representatives of the parties to help members of the verification team examine the documents up until the final day of verification next Monday, but has restricted their role to only grouping the candidates together based on electoral districts.
The second verification stage will run from today (Tuesday) through next Monday. The KPU will decide the fate of the legislative candidates on Jan. 27 before announcing the qualifiers on Jan. 28 and Jan. 29.
The KPU announced earlier this month that only 1,600 of a total of 8,871 candidates passed the first stage of the verification for the election to the House of Representatives, mostly because of the absence of wealth declarations, diplomas and medical certificates.
The Elections Supervisory Committee suspects the widespread use of fake diplomas, but no cases have so far been reported to the police.
Anas also said a number of political parties had replaced some of their candidates who failed to pass the first screening or withdrew their nominations.
"As far as I know, the PDI-P has replaced 20 legislative candidates who withdrew from the race," he said.
A number of parties have also raised the number of their women legislative candidates to meet the minimum 30 percent quota for women as suggested by electoral law. However, some parties have also reduced the number of their women candidates.
The changes in the number of women candidates affected the candidate lists of the PDI-P (547 to 616), the United Development Party (620 to 505), the National Awakening Party (538 to 435), the Golkar Party (660 to 650), the Prosperous Justice party (443 to 446).
Golkar senior executive Azhar Romli said Golkar had dropped 10 candidates due to their failure to meet the KPU requirements. Among them are senior lecturer Engkoswara from Padjadjaran University in Bandung, West Java, who has chosen to contest the Regional Representatives Council election instead.