Voter education campaign 'urgent'

Sri Wahyuni, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

Unless voters are encouraged to mark the individual names of legislative candidates on ballot papers, the upcoming polls will just become another April fool's joke, scholars say.

The experts from Gadjah Mada University (UGM) said the general election in April would simply be a repeat of the 1999 election, which, despite the international recognition for its free and fair manner, resulted in legislators who lacked not only quality or experience, but also commitment to corruption eradication and the qualifications or ability to cope with so many national crises.

"The election law requires good decision-making by voters, not just voting blindly for a party. Voters are expected to know a enough about the people they want to vote for as their representatives so that a contract is made between the one who will govern and the one who will be governed," Riswandha Imawan said during a discussion jointly organized by the Department of Governance Science at UGM's School of Social and Political Sciences here on Monday.

Riswandha said this year's election would only bring about significant changes that lived up to people's expectation if the voters were encouraged to do a bit of research and vote for the right candidates.

"But this requires a voter education mass movement. We cannot expect the KPU, let alone the political parties, to initiate the campaign with only around 70 days left," he added.

KPU is the General Elections Commission, which is organizing the legislative election on April 5 and the direct presidential election on July 5, with the possible run-off on Sept. 20.

Unlike the previous polls, the upcoming general election will adopt an open-list system, in which voters will have to punch the logo of a political party and then have the option to also mark the individual names of legislative candidates. If only the logo is punched, the party will then choose the legislators from the top of the list.

However, most political parties are telling people to simply punch the logos -- presumably, so party leaders can then decide who will sit on each legislature.

Surveys have confirmed that many eligible voters were unaware that they had a choice in the revised electoral system.

Other speakers at the seminar entitled "Strategic Issues of the 2004 Legislative and Regional Representatives Elections" were political observers, Pratikno, Purwo Santoso and I Ketut Putra Erawan, along with moderators Abdul Gaffar Karim and Ari Dwiyana.

Pratikno said that procedurally, the 1999 election was considered fair. However, it resulted some quite disappointing legislative bodies, he said.

He expressed concern that the coming election would lead to a similar situation, as parties contesting the polls tended to "encourage" their supporters to only choose the parties.

"Many political parties have encouraged people to vote for the party, and thus let the party decide its representatives in the legislative bodies," Pratikno said.

The tendency to rank candidates, favored by the party leadership -- regardless of their actual qualifications -- higher up on the legislative lists have sparked protests, sometimes violent, in some regencies.

Riswandha insisted that the time had come now for voters to exercise common sense, instead of emotion, in choosing their representatives.

He said he was pessimistic that a voter education campaign could be successful because political parties were not interested and individual legislative candidates lacked confidence. The unconfident candidates, Riswandha said, just let the parties decide their fate.