Poll date moved to boost voter turnout

Adianto P. Simamora ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Fri, 07/04/2008 11:08 AM  |  National

The date for the legislative elections has been pushed back to April 9, 2009, in a bid to increase voter turnout, the General Elections Commission (KPU) announced Thursday.

The national polls to elect new members of the House of Representatives and local legislative councils were originally scheduled for April 5, 2009 -- the Sunday before Easter, in the middle of the Chinese New Year celebrations. "We are afraid if we go ahead with the original schedule, voters from ethnic Chinese or Christian communities could not fully take part in the elections," KPU chairman Abdul Hafiz Anshari said Thursday.

He said the decision to move the date of the elections was made after consulting the House and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Abdul said the KPU had received many complaints from the public over the original schedule.

The decision also came as the KPU failed to meet the July 5 deadline to name which parties were eligible to run in next year's elections.

As of Thursday afternoon, the KPU had yet to receive the results of factual verifications of many parties, including those from North Sumatra and West Papua provinces.

The polls body has spent the past five weeks checking out 35 new parties to determine whether they meet the requirements set in the 2008 law on political parties.

Under the law, a party must have at least 50 members with chapters in at least 60 percent of the country's 33 provinces and branches in 50 percent of the nation's 500-plus regencies to be eligible to take part in the elections.

The law also requires each party to allocate 30 percent of seats on its central executive board to women.

Many of the verified parties reportedly failed to meet the requirements.

KPU member Andi Nurpati said the recent ruling by the Constitutional Court allowing political party members to run for Regional Representatives Council seats had also caused the revision of the date.

"We have to respond to the ruling," she said.

The KPU earlier said registration of candidates for the regional council would close on July 10.

Andi, who is the KPU's head of party registration, said the election delay had nothing to do with the party's verification problems in several provinces.

She said the KPU in West Papua, for example, had had problems with the airplane used to transport the verification results to Jakarta.

The change in the election date means the KPU will make adjustments to a series of schedules and programs ahead of the elections, Abdul said.

The commission said it would announce which parties were eligible to contest the elections on July 9, a change from the originally scheduled date of July 5.

Under the election law, the KPU must also announce the names of eligible voters nine months before the elections.

The country's first extended political campaign period will start on July 12 and continue until April 5 next year. The nine-month campaign period was originally scheduled to begin July 9.

But the KPU has not yet issued policies regulating the campaigns, including rules on the parties' maximum campaign spending.

The KPU chairman said the change in the date might result in a more expensive election.

"For example, there might be new voters who will turn 17 during those four extra days. If we assume that about 500,000 people will turn 17 each day, we will have up to 2 million additional voters. It will increase the costs of the election," Abdul said, as quoted by kompas.com news portal.

The government has allocated Rp 6.667 trillion to fund the 2009 elections. The budget will be used partly to establish an Elections Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) and local polls commissions, and to procure logistic materials for the legislative and presidential elections.

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