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)