Poll watchdogs find infiltrators

UJUNGPANDANG, South Sulawesi: Nongovernment election monitoring bodies here announced on Saturday that 20 activists of parties contesting the elections had joined their organizations for a spying mission.

The provincial branch's coordinator of the University Network for Free and Fair Elections (Unfrel), M. Darwis, told a meeting with the provincial election supervisory committee and poll monitoring team sent by the European Union that the infiltrators had tried to disrupt monitoring activities conducted by three nongovernment poll watchdogs here.

Darwis identified the spies as supporters of the Golkar Party, the Justice and Unity Party, the Crescent Star Party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, the United Development Party and the Justice Party.

He said Unfrel, the Independent Election Monitoring Committee (KIPP) and the Rectors' Forum had fired the 20 fake volunteers and would report the incident to police.

"We are not certain whether the political parties were behind this masquerade. The fact is we have found their membership cards," Darwis told the meeting.

Darwis said he detected the presence of infiltrators after seeing them provoke fellow poll monitoring volunteers to lodge protests either in trainings or meetings.

The Rectors' Forum's coordinator, Amran Razak, said the party activists had raised his eyebrows for trying to ask for details of his organization's working system and to look for as many organizational mistakes as possible. (27)