PPP sets target of 96 seats in the House
PPP sets target of 96 seats in the House
JAKARTA (JP): The conservative United Development Party (PPP)
aims to boost its number of seats in the House of Representatives
from 62 to 96 in next year's election.
"Considering the current political situation, a target of 96
seats is realistic," party secretary-general Tosari Widjaja told
journalists.
The Moslem-oriented PPP will contest the election along with
the ruling Golkar and the minority Indonesian Democratic Party
(PDI) in next year's general election.
But Tosari was quick to add that the PPP did not expect a
windfall from the leadership crisis that has practically crippled
PDI, the smallest but most outspoken of the three parties.
"We will not reap the benefits of another party's misfortune,"
he said.
The PPP finds its traditional vote base in predominantly
devout Moslem areas, particularly in Java. Its performance
declined sharply in 1987 and 1992 after a major discontented
Moslem group, Nahdlatul Ulama refused to back it.
PPP got 94 of the 500 seats in the House in the 1977 general
election and retained them in the 1982 general election.
Its seats dropped to a record low of 61 in 1987 and rose by
only one in 1992.
Tosari said he hoped the PPP would obtain the most seats in
the Greater Jakarta area in 1997, as it did when the party polled
well over 1 million votes in 1977.
Meanwhile PPP chief Ismail Hasan Metareum said the party would
tighten supervision of next year's general election.
"The most critical stages in next year's general election are
the voting and ballot counting. We, therefore, need to
concentrate on monitoring these two stages," Ismail said.
Under the Indonesian political system the whole electoral
process, from planning to evaluation, is dominated by the
government -- which backs Golkar.
The PPP and PDI have persistently demanded that all three
contestants should be treated equally in the electoral process.
But the proposals have been dismissed by the Golkar and Armed
Forces factions in the People's Consultative Assembly.
Ismail said that the PPP prospective witnesses in ballot-
counting stations would be provided with a basic knowledge of the
relevant laws.
Ismail Hasan alleged that in the past, government officials in
some areas barred PPP activists from taking part in the
supervision of vote counting by citing a variety of pretexts.
"Some of our witnesses in several subdistricts were invited to
the residence of the subdistricts heads, while they were supposed
to attend the voting and the ballot counting," he said.
"By the time they returned to the polling stations for their
monitoring tasks, they were refused entry because they were
late," he explained. (imn)