Poll candidates to be made public

Adianto P. Simamora ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Mon, 10/06/2008 9:58 AM  |  National

After a week of delay, the General Elections Commission (KPU) is to publish, in print and electronic media, the preliminary list of legislative candidates to contest next year's elections.

KPU said the delay was mainly due to tendering problems.

"As we don't hear any complaints from bidders who lost the tenders, KPU will publish names of legislative candidates during a period of five days, starting Monday," Abdul Azis, the KPU member dealing with logistical affairs, told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

"We will only print the names without photographs."

Jakarta-based national daily Republika and state television channel TVRI won the tenders to publish the lists for print and electronic media, respectively.

The 2008 law on legislative elections requires KPU to announce the provisional list of legislative candidates in the media during five days.

It also allows the public to scrutinize the candidates within 10 days. The public can challenge the nominations due to, for example, use of false diplomas, or any involvement in criminal cases. If such reports are verified, KPU could drop candidates from the list.

Abdul said KPU would not extend the period for public scrutiny so as to keep the polls schedule on time.

"Let's stick to the schedule. We will give the public until Oct. 9 time to scrutinize the candidates. It is quite long enough," he said.

KPU is to announce the final list of legislative candidates Oct. 30 at the latest.

The elections body announced last week that only 11,868 legislative nominees met the first phase of administration screening and while 2,152 names had been disqualified.

The legislative elections will be held on April 9, 2009, with 38 parties contesting 560 seats in the House of Representatives.

The General Elections Supervisory Board (Bawaslu) has urged the KPU to extend the period for public scrutiny by between five and seven days to make up for the delay in publication of the lists of candidates.

The Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro) said that the 10-day period in which the public can assess the nominees should be counted from the date when the preliminary list is published in the media.

Cetro's executive director Hadar N. Gumay expressed worries about public lack of awareness on the availability of the list of legislative candidates, due to the lack of KPU efforts to spread information about changes in the required timetable of preparatory steps for the elections.

The KPU however, argued that the public had long been aware about each of these steps.

"Everybody already knows about the announcement of legislative candidates. The problem is whether the public is interested in investigating the candidates," Abdul said.

He said the public apathy concerning the provisional list of Regional Representative Council (DPD) candidates published in the KPU website could be repeated in the case of the legislative candidates. "Until now, we did not receive any comments from the public about the DPD list," he said.

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