Voter education campaign 'urgent'

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.