Polls demand neutral monitors

By Vedi R. Hadiz

PERTH (JP): The general elections scheduled for June are supposed to restore the Indonesian people's trust in the government. Recently, the people's confidence in those running the country has been wearing very thin.

With the notion of a transitional presidium rejected by most of Indonesia's political leaders -- in government as well as in the opposition -- these elections are particularly crucial in deciding the direction of change in Indonesia.

Holding elections -- especially those that are free and fair -- is a huge and daunting task.

Without a well-managed organization running the elections, there is great scope for practices which deviate from most people's understanding of "free" and "fair".

Therefore, it is also very important that Indonesia has a credible election watchdog -- an organization that people can trust to make sure that no funny business takes place and that the election results truly reflect the aspirations of the people.

The draft laws on politics currently being debated in the House of Representatives (DPR) do mention the establishment of electoral monitoring committees. These are supposed to be set up under the jurisdiction of the courts.

Thus, at the national level, the Supreme Court is to establish a central committee, and the lower courts to create committees at the regional and local levels.

But is this scheme enough to bolster people's confidence -- especially given past experiences with wide-scale cheating in elections?

Already, much fear is being expressed about the possible pervasiveness of "money politics", a particularly big threat when holding elections in the middle of the worst economic crisis the country has had.

The answer to the above question is probably "no". People's trust in the official institutions of the state is at an all-time low -- and for very good reason. Leaving the monitoring of elections to these official committees is not going to do much to ensure the "legitimacy" of the whole costly and potentially volatile electoral process.

And, as we all know, the courts in Indonesia do not have a reputation for being fair and incorruptible.

Supposing these official monitoring committees do not maintain their neutral position, as feared by some, and work in favor of only one of the contestants, who then will take charge of trying offenses committed by them, if the courts were responsible for their establishment?

It is for reasons such as these that an effective, independent electoral monitoring effort is required.

The draft laws on politics currently being debated do also mention the possible role of independent monitors, and this does, at first glance, show some progress.

However, nothing so far has expanded on the nature of that role. There are no details about the authority of independent monitors, their functions or the procedures to set them in place. Neither is there anything to explain at what point their role begins.

Indonesia's size makes it extremely difficult for any independent monitoring organization to do its job well.

It will have to cover an area that spans 300,000 or so voting booths across thousands of islands. If two people are required to monitor each booth, 600,000 people will have to be deployed throughout the country to cover the implementation of these elections.

Thus, any independent electoral monitoring body must be prepared well before voting day itself. It must have the resources to mobilize and train personnel capable of carrying out this huge task.

It is therefore crucial that everything pertaining to the role and authority of the independent monitoring body is spelled out in detail very soon.

If these details are announced with only a month remaining before voting day, it will be virtually impossible for the independent monitors to do their job well. Which then renders the mention of independent monitors in the current draft laws virtually meaningless.

To raise the confidence of the people in the whole electoral process, independent monitors should be given a role well before the actual day of voting.

Ideally, they should also be able to monitor the process of voter registration. The role of the monitors should also extend beyond voting day, to include the counting of the votes. In this way, it can be ensured that these crucial processes remain completely aboveboard.

If one or several well organized and trusted monitoring organizations can be set up, they can divide up the Indonesian archipelago among themselves so that more area can be covered.

This is especially important to ensure that election monitoring can extend to the more remote parts of the country, where cheating or vote-buying could conceivably occur without drawing much attention.

Moreover, if these organizations are credible enough, they could put their stamp of approval on the actual vote-counting process, so that nobody doubts the fairness of the election results.

Several independent monitoring bodies have recently been set up (or revived) in anticipation of the June elections. Some of them may have to work together to gain optimum results, given their limitations when working individually.

But it is now up to the government and the legislators debating the draft laws to show that they are truly serious about providing a role for these monitors and not just playing with words, as has been the case so many times in the past.

The writer is a research fellow at the Asia Research Center of Murdoch University in Australia.