Bandung-based Padjadjaran University (Unpad) student Anta Maulana Nasution plans to be a voter and a supervisor in the April 9 legislative election, which will be the first he participates in
andung-based Padjadjaran University (Unpad) student Anta Maulana Nasution plans to be a voter and a supervisor in the April 9 legislative election, which will be the first he participates in.
The 20-year-old fisheries science student said he planned to cast his vote in his hometown of Bekasi as early as possible on Wednesday so he could immediately return to Bandung, where he is registered as an election volunteer with the West Java Elections Monitoring Agency (Bawaslu).
Bandung and Bekasi are two West Java cities situated 130 kilometers apart.
But despite his planned trip, Anta said the monitoring agency had yet to contact him to explain his duties on voting day.
'I'll be very happy to contribute to the election as a volunteer, but no one has told me what to do on the day,' he told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
Anta appears to be not the only Unpad student in the dark.
Unpad student body chairman Donny Fajar Ramadhan said more than 200 students had registered as election volunteers with local Bawaslu offices.
'We've contacted Bawaslu offices several times in the past weeks asking for feedback but they have not responded. The legislative election is only two days away but these students don't even have a [volunteer] ID card,' Donny said.
Dozens of students at Yogyakarta Muhammadiyah University (UMY) have also experienced the same thing.
'We don't even know the simple things, like which polling station we will work at or how we document and report election violations to Bawaslu,' said UMY international relations student Suleman, who organized Bawaslu's election volunteer registration on his campus.
Since last year, Bawaslu has recruited high school and university students to increase youth participation in the election and solve its lack of human resources. It expects to recruit 1 million election volunteers aged between 17 and 29, all of who are entitled to vote in the 2014 elections.
In a recent discussion, University of Indonesia (UI) political observer Chusnul Mariyah said high school and university students should be given an opportunity to assist general election organizers as they were 'the least corrupt elements of society'.
Election watchdogs and observers have questioned Bawaslu's capacity to supervise the upcoming elections, mainly due to its limited number of election supervisors.
Jakarta, which manages 17,045 polling stations, only employs less than 1,000 election supervisors, meaning a supervisor must handle an average of 17 polling stations on April 9.
Responding to a report that said some students had encountered difficulties getting trained and in obtaining volunteer ID cards, a member of Bawaslu's working committee for the election said it was due to the limited capabilities of the working committee.
'It's simply impossible for us to train a million volunteers. Therefore, we have uploaded journals and videos to our website where anyone can get training on how to become a volunteer,' the member, who declined to be named, told the Post.
The absence of an ID card, he added, did not mean that students could not serve as election observers.
'You can become a volunteer on the spot during voting day,' he said.
Share your experiences, suggestions, and any issues you've encountered on The Jakarta Post. We're here to listen.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. We appreciate your feedback.