Watchdogs gear up for polls as violation reports pile up
JAKARTA (JP): Thousands of poll monitors across the country are bracing for Monday's general election, billed as the most democratic in over 40 years despite mounting reports of elections violations.
In Bandung, West Java, the provincial elections monitoring committee called on poll officials not to prevent student poll monitors from obtaining cards which enable them to vote in locations other than where they are registered.
Some 40,000 students across the province have joined the Rector's Forum, and thousands more have joined two internationally respected domestic poll watchdogs; the University Forum for Free and Fair Elections (Unfrel) and the Independent Elections Monitoring Committee (KIPP).
"The student volunteers must scatter around the province to watch the poll process and won't be able to cast their ballots in polling stations near their homes. We will lose lots of votes if the students fail to obtain the cards," a provincial elections committee member, Goeswin Agus, said.
Goeswin said he had received complaints from a number of student volunteers who were encountering difficulties obtaining the cards.
The professor of mathematics at the Bandung Institute of Technology also said the monitoring committee would not accept incomplete reports of elections violations from the volunteers.
"I want them to watch the whole ballot process until the poll officials finish writing their report on the balloting," Goeswin said.
He said the committee would sue independent poll monitors if their reports of violations proved to be untrue.
More than 25 million people in the province are eligible to vote on Monday. They will cast their ballots at some 54,500 polling stations.
While complaining about the Riau Elections Committee's decision not to allow 4,500 Unfrel volunteers to observe the polls in the province, Unfrel national coordinator Todung Mulya Lubis warned on Sunday of groups who were attempting to disrupt the work of the poll monitors.
Todung urged police and security authorities to guarantee the safety of Unfrel volunteers, saying the unnamed groups could use force to disrupt the monitors.
He also criticized the Riau Elections Committee's decision to ignore a June 2 message from the General Elections Commission that all registered poll monitors, including the 4,500 Unfrel volunteers posted in Riau, were eligible to monitor the polls.
From Bandar Lampung, Antara reported the Joint Forum for Monitoring Elections in Lampung held a ceremony at Saburai Enggal sports hall to mark the deployment of more than 10,000 poll monitors to some 7,000 polling stations across the province.
On Saturday, foreign poll monitors grouped in the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) arrived in Jayapura, Irian Jaya, for Monday's elections.
Elizabeth Dugan, IRI's resident program director for Southeast Asia, said her volunteers would monitor the polls in Merauke regency. Provincial elections committee chief Ben Vincen Djehatu said a team of two NDI poll monitors would be posted in Jayapura, the provincial capital.
Five foreign observers from IRI and the International Foundation for Elections Systems have arrived in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan. They will join more than 6,000 domestic poll monitors.
In Bandung, European Union Ambassador John Gwyn Morgan said the international community would not hesitate to impose sanctions on Indonesia if Monday's elections were not free and fair.
"Indonesia will bear some consequences for failing to meet the expectations for a free and fair general election. Apart from generating an illegitimate government, unfair and unfree elections would prompt stern action from Indonesia's business partners against the country," Morgan said.
Reports of violations included the reluctance of supporters of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle to remove communication posts in East Java by the Sunday deadline. An executive of the party, Sunardi, discounted a warning from the provincial elections committee, saying the posts were built not only for the party but for the people. (34/43/nur/anr/amd)