Polls demand neutral monitors

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.