Some Obstacles to Indonesian Election

SOME OBSTACLES TO INDONESIAN ELECTION.

Indonesian politics is expecting one of the most important ritual in democracy - the legislature election scheduled on April 9, 2009. Unfortunately for some reasons the elction may fail. The following conditions are main obstacles to the election.

First is poor performance of the election commission. From the start people have been doubtful on the capability of the election commission’s personnel. Maybe they are good but they are not the best reputable people. One of its members has legal problem on corruption charges. People’s doubt finally found its proof these days as we observed the election process. Printing and distribution of vote ballot is messy. In many parts of Indonesia the local election commission have not received the vote ballot. Some other areas received broken vote ballot. In the provinces in Sumatra and West Nusa Tenggara for example, the local commission received wet vote ballot. Consequently they are useless. There are also wrong shipment. A local election commission in Central Java received vote ballot for North Sumatra.

The next evidence of their weakness is their inconsistency like changing campaign schedule and rules. Parties are complaining that the election commission has changed their schedule for the so called open campaign during which party leaders will meet their supporters in mass gathering and then go around cities in show -of -force rally. These changes create difficulty for them and misinformation for the supporters. The changing rules make further complications. People think that the election commission add some confusions rather than solution.

Another evidence is the fact that members of the election commission went abroad to ‘disseminate’ the election while the more important work is abundant. One of them went to Moscow where there are only hundreds of Indonesian live there. The public are questioning the urgency of such visit. Our common sense cannot understand why they must go abroad while problems are abundant waiting for the election commission to solve.

The worse is the problem of list of voters. PDIP (the Democratic party of struggle) under former president Megawati last week revealed that there are manipulation on the list of voters. Megawati met the former local police chief of east Java who revealed such manipulation in local election in Madura. They suspected that there are mark ups on the list. Soon party leaders reacted. Chairman of Gerindra party Prabowo Subianto proposed that the election should be postponed. General (ret) Wiranto, former Armed forces commander and leader of Hanura party urged that the police must take the issue seriously. If the election commission cannot solve this problem, more serious problems may arise such as legal battle or even worse there will be riots.

Second obstacle is complexity of the vote ballot which raises possibility of undecided voters and wrong or destroyed votes. The vote ballot in the coming elections looks very complicated as people have to vote not only on names of party but also on on names of lagislature candidate. Consequently the vote ballot is full of names. It is as large as newspaper. Many people just do not want to spend their time and energy to read it carefully. They decided not to vote. Local elections indicated that the number of undecided voters is around 30 – 40%. It is most likely that the percentage will be about the same. In addition, the complicated vote ballot will make confusions and mistakes. Consequently there will be many invalid votes.

Third obstacle is accumulation of all those factors that may break into violence. The economic condition of the Indonesian people is very poor. In this condition most of them are in a fragile mental condition. So it is difficult for them to bear more burden. Disappointment over the result of the elections will break into violence as indicated in some areas. Dispute over election result in Maluku is a good example.

With those obstacles are not yet solved, its is very hard to imagine that the coming election will run flawlessly. They may cause partial or total failure to the election. It is most likely that partial failures may take place. Maybe the voting process in some areas will not finished well due to the lack of vote ballot. Maybe the vote ballot are not enough since some of them are destroyed or invalid. Maybe there will be fightings.