Precedence: bulk Buletin PANTAU Edisi 3 (21 Mei-30 Mei 1999) THE SAGA OF THE DAMAGED BALLOTS Ballots for election voting are one of the most important components of a general election process. In some areas of Indonesia ballots appear to already have been punched in favour of certain parties although legitimate voting will not take place until 7 June 1999. This introduces the possibility of a lack of fairness in the upcoming election process. There appeared to be general consensus that the main goal of those responsible was to sabotage the election process rather than increase the ballot of the chosen parties. This crucial piece of election news got quite different coverage on different television channels. Some channels clearly noted that the punched ballots were in favour of Golkar and PDI-P while others appeared to be trying to hide this important fact. AN-Teve raised the issue of the ballots for the first time while reporting statements made by TNI (Indonesian Military) Assistant Major-General Sudi Silalahi during a speech before the Coordinating Meeting of Assistants to Heads of Universities. Silalahi stated that TNI's intelligence agency had identified a major activity by a certain group on 28 May 1999. According to TNI, the main intention of this group was to sabotage the election process, with the primary targets being the KPU (General Election Commission) and the Cendana Family (former president Soeharto's clan). AN-Teve simply reported this view without providing any alternative perspective on it. According to Silalahi, this group was exploiting students to carry out its actions. Should this action by the group fail, it would attempt to destroy ballots so that the public would lose trust in political parties and, as a result, certain political parties would contest the official result of the election. AN-Teve could, however, have gotten more in-depth information regarding the ballots as it was well-known that some washed away, others were lost, and some punched. It may be concluded from the above statement that TNI (Indonesian Military) is aware of what really happened to the ballots. Unfortunately, AN-Teve did not probe deeper into these statements or this issue. In its morning news on 27 May 1999, SCTV noted that KIPP (Independent Committee on Election Monitoring) had found 60 punched ballots - in favour of PDI-P and Golkar - and that KIPP located the responsibility in Sumenep regency in Madura, East Java. SCTV thus tried to ensure that the public received a full factual version of events. RCTI, however, was less open in its reporting. It simply noted that some ballots had been punched without noting the parties which were to have benefitted from this, thus omitting a key part of the information. Could it be that RCTI did not want to offend the government? The following is a direct quote from RCTI's news reporting: "Most of the ballots have been distributed to the regencies - and some of them were missing, had been punched on the pictures of certain parties, were stolen or were washed away in the river. The total number of damaged ballots from several areas was 14,000." Indosiar also failed to report on which parties had been favoured in the punched ballots. However, this station did try to probe deeper into the issue by interviewing PPI (Indonesian Election Committee) Vice Chairman Hasballah M. Sa'ad and KIPP General Secretary Mulyana W. Kusumah. Sa'ad confirmed that there appeared to be a conspiracy between the companies which had printed the ballots and certain parties. Kusumah noted that the reason the ballots had been punched was primarily to sabotage the election. In his opinion, it was better not to mention the names of the parties which had been favoured in light of the fact that this was not the result of an official policy by these parties. ---------- SiaR WEBSITE: http://apchr.murdoch.edu.au/minihub/siarlist/maillist.html
