Police told to protect election whistle blowers

Moch. N. Kurniawan The Jakarta Post Jakarta

The people are likely to be reluctant to report violations of next year's electoral processes, unless authorities, especially the police, provide them with physical protection.

The Independent Election Monitoring Committee (KIPP), the Rectors' Forum and the Supervisory Elections Committee (Panwaslu) agreed over the weekend that a witness protection law was needed.

"We expect the police to protect witnesses who are willing to disclose violations of the electoral processes.

"But we cannot expect much from this "protection" as the country still lacks police numbers and we still do not have a law on witnesses protection," KIPP coordinator Ray Rangkuti said over the weekend.

Indonesia is scheduled to hold legislative elections in April 2004, and two-phased direct presidential elections in July and September respectively.

The National Elections Commission (KPU) complained earlier that no one came forward to report alleged document forgeries by individuals aspiring for seats in the Regional Representative Council (DPD).

Ray said KIPP planned to establish crisis centers in every province to protect and conceal the identities of those who came forward to report such violations.

According to him, for their own security people are not expected to disclose their identities when filing a report to KIPP at crisis centers.

He said KIPP volunteers would then investigate the report. Should the case be brought to court they will also testify at the court along with Panwaslu.

"It is part of our efforts to optimize our monitoring role of the elections," he said.

Ray predicted that violations would be rampant during both legislative and presidential elections and during the ballot counting.

Separately, another election monitoring organization, the Rectors' Forum, said that it would follow the existing rulings to protect witnesses willing to report election violations.

"If the law requires us to conceal the identity of witnesses, we will do it. We will do our jobs properly," said Sudjana Sapi'e of the Rectors' Forum.

Meanwhile, Panwaslu said it had found difficulties in finding witnesses with the courage to testify before the committee over violations of the recent Regional Representatives Council (DPD) registration.

The committee's vice chairman, Saut H. Sirait, said most witnesses were unwilling to disclose such violations out of fear for their own safety.

Saut admitted that, although the committee was seeking to collaborate with a number of monitoring organizations to help protect witnesses, such collaborations were unlikely to eventuate due to a lack of funds.

"Actually, we have planned to encourage monitoring organizations, rather than individuals, to report such violations to the committee," he said.

Based on this approach, witnesses would anonymously submit reports to monitoring organizations. The latter would then forward these to the committee and testify before the court if necessary, he said.

"However, some monitoring organizations have told me that they lacked the funds to do so," he said.