Voter education successful: KPU

Voter education successful: KPU

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Ambon/Banda Aceh

The General Elections Commission (KPU) claims that the
dissemination of information on the legislative election was a
success as reflected by the high number of valid votes.

KPU member Valina Singka Subekti admitted there were less
valid votes in this year's election than in the 1999 polls, but
said it could not be read as a setback considering the complex
procedures in the recent election.

"Although the percentage of invalid votes has increased, I can
say that our voter education was relatively successful due to the
complexity of this year's legislative election and the limited
time available to disseminate the information to the public,"
Valina told reporters.

As of Monday invalid votes for the election of House of
Representatives members reached 6,691,583 or 6.8 percent of
97,964,840 votes counted from around 447,000 polling stations.

There were over 147 million people eligible to vote at more
than 585,000 polling stations across the country in the April 5
election.

Out of 110,172,137 votes counted in the 1999 election of House
members, 4,385,507 or 3.9 percent were declared invalid.

In this year's election, a voter should perforate a party
symbol and the name of a legislative candidate belonging to the
party or just the symbol of a party on the ballot paper.

In previous elections, people only voted for parties.

A number of surveys rated the KPU's performance in informing
the public of the election procedures as poor, based on findings
that many people were not aware of how to cast votes, the
political parties contesting the election nor legislative
candidates ahead of the poll.

Valina said the KPU would only announce the voter turnout for
this year's election when the ballot counting was finished.

She also said that the KPU would open registration for
additional voters for the presidential election between April 25
and May 10. The second chance to register followed complaints
lodged by people who were unable to vote because they were not
registered.

Separately, KPU member Anas Urbaningrum said the KPU would
move back the registration period for presidential and vice
presidential candidates from its original schedule between May 1
and May 7 if the commission failed to announce the election
results on April 28.

The KPU is still waiting for results from regental/municipal
election commissions, which should have been completed on April
20.

Meanwhile the commission has given the Maluku Provincial
Election Commission (KPUD) an extension for manual vote counting
to April 25. Maluku KPUD chairman Idrus Tatuhey said the KPU
would not tolerate anymore delays.

The slow manual vote counting was due in part to discrepancies
in the number of votes counted by the district election
commission and witnesses who represented political parties.

"To speed up the process, we will take the results of the vote
counting from the regental and municipal KPUD ourselves before we
send them to Jakarta," Idrus said.

In Aceh, the Southeast Aceh regental election supervisory
committee (Panwaslu) announced 59 violations, including the use
of vote buying by Golkar Party.

Committee official M. Jafar said Golkar executives took back
the money and construction materials it had given to local
residents of a certain village to build a mosque after the party
lost there.