Poll watchdogs find infiltrators

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)