Vote registration officers must cope with uninformed public

Vote registration officers must cope with uninformed public

Arya Abhiseka, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The number one problem for Harun, a voter registration volunteer,
is locating the houses where he dropped off registration forms a
week earlier.

It's not that he has a bad memory. But the houses are in the
small and crowded alleyways of the Bukit Duri slum area near the
Ciliwung River in East Jakarta. And the house numbers do not seem
to help.

"House number eight does not necessarily stand next to house
number nine. They are spread all over the area and I have to
memorize them and find the houses one by one," Harun told The
Jakarta Post on Thursday evening.

Harun, who works as a security guard during the day, is just
one of many people from all walks of life who have volunteered to
serve as field officers to register eligible voters for the 2004
elections.

Locating house numbers is only one of the many obstacles faced
by Harun and the other volunteers.

Generally, he said, people are aware of the upcoming elections
but are unaware of how it will work, the result of a poor public
awareness campaign.

He said, as an example, that people were often unprepared to
give him the information he required.

"It makes our job harder than it sounds, because we have to
spend quite some time waiting for the residents to find the
documents we need."

Yet he happily does the job, for which he is only paid Rp 500
for each person he registers.

"I calculated that I will make between Rp 300,000 (US$33) and
Rp 400,000 from this job. A pretty good amount," Harun said.

The General Elections Commission (KPU), which is organizing
the 2004 legislative elections, contracted the Central Statistics
Agency (BPS) to conduct a simultaneous nationwide census and
voter registration.

The BPS has trained and deployed some 230,000 field officers
since April 1 of this year to begin registering people.

The process was due to be completed by April 30, but when the
BPS failed to meet this deadline the KPU extended the deadline to
May 15. But the registration process in Jakarta has been extended
to November, as some 3 percent of the population has still not
been registered.

The KPU set aside some Rp 407 billion (US$45.7 million) for
the process. Despite the relatively high budget, the process
often ran into difficulties, with reports of a lack of
registration forms and field officers in several provinces. And
as of today, the nationwide census and voter registration is
still underway.

Though some people complain about a lack of public awareness
about the registration process, the KPU claims to have budgeted
some Rp 1.5 billion for a public awareness campaign, including
public service announcements on television and radio.

However, these announcements have rarely found their way onto
the air during peak hours.

The result of this rather lackluster public awareness campaign
has been public misinformation and misinterpretation of whole
election process.

Harun said the biggest problem he faced was when people
refused to fill out voter registration forms because they were so
disappointed with the whole political situation.

He said everyone, including foreigners, had to fill out the
registration forms, regardless of whether they planned to vote in
the elections or not, because the information would be used to
create a single population database.

Harun also stressed the government's failure to create
awareness that the registration process was part of the plan to
provide citizens with registered identity numbers.

The identity numbers can be described as the equivalent to the
Social Security numbers used in the United States, which is a
single identity number that is used for various purposes,
including obtaining an identification card, driver's license,
marriage license, passport, visa and bank account.

Aminuddin, a registration officer in the upscale neighborhood
of Menteng, Central Jakarta, said he also noticed a lack of
public awareness about the registration process. Worse, he often
had to navigate his way around guard dogs.

Another problem is that most of the residents are rarely at
home so it is difficult to find them and register them, he said.

"I still have about 20 registration forms that have not been
filled out or returned since last month," said Aminuddin.

The Central Statistic Agency told The Jakarta Post on Thursday
that the voter registration process was proceeding smoothly, with
about 98 percent of the country's 210 million residents already
registered, with the exception of the provinces of Aceh and
Papua.