Yudhoyono yet to decide on problematic KPU candidate

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Thu, 10/11/2007 4:01 PM

Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is yet to decide the fate of Samsul Bahri, the General Elections Commission (KPU) candidate implicated in a graft case, Home Minister Mardiyanto said Wednesday.

He said the President was awaiting the results of the commission selection team's verification process.

""Upon receiving all the information on Samsul Bahri, I was instructed to communicate with the House of Representatives regarding the selection process,"" Mardiyanto said as quoted by detik.com at Cabinet meeting at the State Palace.

The minister said the decision to reconfirm Samsul's status with the House did not violate the existing mechanism as the President still had five more working days to study the case before making a decision on Samsul's KPU membership.

""We will ask for an explanation of the details of the fit-and-proper test carried out by the House's Commission II on home affairs. So we have yet to decide whether to eliminate Samsul or not,"" Mardiyanto said.

The House's home affairs commission announced the final seven KPU candidates last Thursday and ranked Samsul, who is a professor of agriculture at Brawijaya University in Malang, East Java, fifth out of 20 candidates.

Soon after the announcement, the Attorney General's Office said Samsul was allegedly involved in a corruption case related to the development of a sugar industrial complex in Malang.

Later on Wednesday, Mardiyanto said the government was determined to finish registering eligible voters in April 2008, to give all stake-holders, particularly the KPU and the political parties, adequate time for verification processes before the legislative election scheduled for April 2009.

""The government is determined to keep public confidence in the voters registration (process) as it is mandated by the 2007 general elections commission law. Voter registration has been completed in 92 regencies, while 269 other regencies and municipalities are in the final phase,"" he said after visiting the Directorate General for Population Registration Affairs in South Jakarta.

The directorate general, which is in charge of registering eligible voters, is updating the data on eligible voters for the 2009 elections.

There were some 167 million eligible voters in the 2004 elections and the figure is expected to rise by 2 percent in 2009.

Asked to comment on the House's skepticism of the accuracy of the voter data, Mardiyanto said motivated him to do his job well and be punctual.

""It's better for us to be the subject of skepticism now, but later we can prove we can do the job perfectly,"" he said.

The special committee assigned to deliberate the bill on general elections has expressed skepticism that the government will be able to meet the deadline to provide accurate data on eligible voters in April 2008, saying the data is vulnerable to manipulation by ruling parties.

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