PDI, PPP struggle to field election scrutineers
JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), doomed to fail in the election because of its unpopular government-backed leadership, struggled to field scrutineers at polling stations yesterday.
The United Development Party (PPP) was reported to be a few scrutineers short, while the dominant Golkar had scrutineers at every station.
Under electoral law, polling station officials must seek community volunteers to scrutinize ballot counting if the parties fail to field their own scrutineers.
Officials said ballot counting proceeded at many polling stations without PDI scrutineers.
In Surabaya, where supporters of the two PDI factions had often fought in the streets, only one of the 12 polling stations visited by governor Basofi Soedirman had a PDI scrutineer.
Basofi, who chairs the East Java provincial electoral committee, said that many PDI supporters had been too afraid of violence to act as scrutineers.
East Java PDI chief Dimmy Haryanto said earlier there was no way he could provide scrutineers for the province's 52,000 polling stations.
He told the government that polling station officials should seek volunteers to scrutinize ballot counting on behalf of the PDI.
Basofi, a famous Dangdut folk singer, said people loyal to the PDI's deposed leader, Megawati Soekarnoputri, might have terrorized rival PDI supporters to stop them acting as scrutineers.
Megawati, barred from standing for election, announced last Thursday that she would not vote in the election because she had lost the party's chair to Soerjadi in an illegal congress. Many of her loyalists have followed her example.
There were no PDI scrutineers at the 731 polling stations in the mayoralty of Yogyakarta, according to the local electoral committee.
This contradicted a statement by the Yogyakarta deputy electoral chief Col. AR Gaffar that all three parties had selected scrutineers for every polling station.
In Yogyakarta's regencies, the PPP and PDI fielded few scrutineers.
Only 448 scrutineers, mostly Golkar's, had been registered with the local government to cover the 1,344 polling stations in Sleman regency. In Gunungkidul, only 710 people had been registered to scrutinize ballot counting at 1,237 stations.
The absence of PDI scrutineers was obvious in Jakarta, with none turning up at the 10 polling stations near the governor's office.
Pradjoko of the South Jakarta electoral committee, which ran 2,737 stations, said the stations lacked 178 scrutineers: 69 from PPP and 109 from PDI. There were only 12 PDI scrutineers at the 31 polling stations in Senayan.
In East Flores, East Nusa Tenggara, about 200 PDI cadres protested that the local electoral committee had made it hard for the party to field scrutineers. They threatened to protest again in the regency's capital of Larantuka today.
PPP chief Ismail Hasan Metareum claimed that his party had had trouble registering scrutineers in some areas.
In Wonogiri, Central Java, at least 140 PPP scrutineers quit after local authorities threatened to make their future administrative dealings difficult, Antara reported.
The news agency quoted the PPP Semarang chapter's deputy secretary, Harminto Agustono, as saying that party officials told Wonogiri officials that they would take the case to Jakarta.
Electoral committee members said there were few PDI scrutineers at polling stations in Semarang.
In Bandung, PPP officials protested that the regent had slashed the party's number of scrutineers from 2,000 to 1,000, who had to cover the regency's 4,979 polling stations.
West Java Governor R. Nuriana blamed this shortfall on the PPP.
"According to the rules, it (the PPP) should have proposed its scrutineers long before the election began," he said after inspecting polling stations in the towns of Tasikmalaya and Serang from a helicopter. (pan/12/aan/yac/har)