At a meeting with the Bali Regional Elections Commission (KPUD) at the governor's office in Denpasar on Friday, political parties signed an agreement not to display campaign banners on public property and to keep the peace during their campaign rallies.

"Every participant in the 2009 elections must do all they can to prevent an possibility of a violent conflict and keep a peaceful and democratic campaign," head of the Bali KPUD, Lanang Perbawa, said during the meeting.

The agreement stipulates that arguing parties, with the relevant authorities, must resolve through mediation any violent conflict that arises. The agreement also allows the police to prosecute any parties if they fail to reach a peaceful agreement.

The same procedure applies to parties that continue to put political advertisements on public property.

"If a member of the public or a public institution feels they have been disturbed by these political campaign banners, then the respective political parties may be held responsible," Lanang said.

The meeting was held after the KPUD received complaints from the public and several companies, including PT PLN, the state-owned electricity company, and PT Telkom, the state-owned telecommunications company.

They complained that political parties were putting the public in "danger" by attaching their campaign advertisements on trees and utility poles.

"There are these huge flags tied to electricity and telephone poles. This is extremely dangerous and it is making it hard for the companies to maintain these structures," Lanang said.

Other areas that must be kept free of political advertising include the Bajra Sandhi Museum and the administration's Civic Center in Renon, Denpasar.

Lanang said political parties will have four days, starting Friday, to take down these political banners, and that the KPUD, along with the campaign supervisory agency (Panwaslu) and the police, would be swift to penalize any violators once the grace period was over.

However, not everyone was satisfied with the agreement. Agung Wardana, director of Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) in Bali, criticized the agreement for being too broad.

Agung, who was present at the meeting, said the agreement needed more detailed rules such as a prohibition on nailing political banners to trees and loud noises during campaign rallies.

"All political parties should further be required to mobilize a clean-up team to make sure they properly manage and discard all the garbage from their campaigning," he said.

Agung plans to review the political parties his organization believes has damaged the environment when the open-campaign starts on March 16, 2009. Voting day is April 9.

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