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Confusion surrounds elections in Indonesia


INDONESIA goes to the polls today amid widespread confusion about new voting rules, chaotic organisation and warnings of corrupted voter lists.The general election, the third since the dictator Soeharto was deposed, is a huge undertaking involving 171 million registered voters who will decide on more than 800,000 candidates contesting national, provincial and district legislatures.There are more than 600,000 polling stations on the country's 6000 or so populated islands.The most important contest, the vote for 560 members of the national legislature, will have an important bearing on the presidential poll due in July.

Opinion polls suggest President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Partai Demokrat will win at least 25 per cent of the seats, the threshold needed to run as president.Golkar, Soeharto's former party, and Megawati Soekarnoputri' s Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) are polling about 15 per cent while several smaller nationalist and Islamic parties show support between 4 and 7 per cent.PDI-P officials said this week there was already evidence of substantial electoral fraud and accused the country's electoral commission of being improperly influenced by parties with "close access to the power holder", Partai Demokrat.

Meanwhile, analysts have described the organisation of the poll as unprofessional and chaotic. "We have introduced quite radical changes to the voting system," said Muhammed Qodari, executive director of Indobarometer, a polling organisation. "But there has been much less education of the population for this year's election compared to the last one."Due to the huge number of candidates and 44 parties competing at national and regional level, the ballot papers are as big as the polling booths. Rather than simply nominating the party of their choice, voters will have to select individual candidates whose photos will be displayed outside the polling stations. And they will have to vote for candidates for at least two, and sometimes, three parliaments.There have also been persistent problems with assembling the voter lists, including allegations that rolls contain names that appear numerous times, include people who do not exist and dead people. The executed Bali bomber Amrozi, for example, is reportedly on the list.Vote buying is rampant and there are only 77,300 official poll monitors policing the 610,000 odd polling stations. Adding to the chaos potential, voters will have only from 7am to noon to vote.

Another potential flashpoint is a new rule that only candidates whose party achieves 2.5 per cent or more of the overall vote will be able to take their place in the national parliament.That means successful candidates may not be able to take their seats. Forty per cent of parties represented in the parliament are likely to be wiped out.This week President Yudhoyono called for a peaceful election, as he deployed hundreds of thousands of police and military to handle security.But it may be that Indonesians respond to the confusion by simply not turning up at all.Many are taking advantage of the long weekend - Good Friday is a national holiday in officially secular Indonesia. There are predictions that up to 40 per cent of eligible voters will not participate, twice the level of the previous poll.

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