Camelia Pasandaran – In a decision that could trigger mass protests ahead of next week's national polls, the General Elections Commission, or KPU, said on Tuesday that 32 political parties out of the 38 in the polls should be disqualified in parts of at least 11 provinces for failing to submit campaign finance reports.

KPU Chairman Abdul Hafiz Anshary said in a press conference that letters had been sent to provincial election commissions asking them to disqualify all parties that did not meet the March 9 deadline. He refused to release the names of the 32 parties or the districts, nor did he say how many they would try to ban from competing on April 9.

However, according to independent data released by the Elections Supervisory Board, or Bawaslu, the number of political parties that may be disqualified was about 24, in up to 19 districts across eight provinces.

In one of the clearest instances, Bawaslu has called for the disqualification of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, or PDI-P, the National Mandate Party, or PAN, and the National Awakening Party, or PKB, and all of their candidates, in Samosir, North Sumatra Province.

There are around 75,000 registered voters in Samosir, according to a provincial Web site.

The KPU and Bawaslu, which have been at loggerheads over the campaign finance disclosure issue, received partial data separately from their respective provincial and district offices.

The KPU's announcement on Tuesday came a day after Bawaslu threatened to form a council to probe the KPU if it didn't publicly list the political parties that had failed to meet the deadline.

"We're still updating the data and we will announce the names of the parties later, after we gather the complete data," Hafiz said, adding that Bawaslu's data was not necessarily accurate. "We will disqualify all parties that did not report the campaign funds in their bank accounts by March 9."

With no time to print new ballot papers minus the names of the disqualified parties and candidates, the KPU will only post notices at polling stations in the affected districts. The KPU also asked the provincial election commissions to publicly announce the names of the parties that have been disqualified, Hafiz said.

Bawaslu said that small, little-known parties had the most financial disclosure violations. The Prosperous Indonesia Party, the New Indonesia Alliance Party and the Regional Unity Party were all disqualified from an unspecified province, Bawaslu said.

The Election Law requires all political parties to report their campaign funding or face disqualification from the polls on April 9. Political parties at the national level were able to submit their financial reports, but some of their offices at the provincial and district levels failed to do so.

A number of district election commissions had previously decided to disqualify the parties, prompting the KPU to publicly announce that it reserved the right to make the final decision.

"We were already prepared to disqualify the parties ourselves, but since the Election Supervisory Board, or Bawaslu, said on Monday that this is the authority of the regional election commissions, in respect to Bawaslu's request, we will let the regional commissions decide," Hafiz said. "The regional commissions should issue the decision letters by [Friday]."

Arief Wibowo, a member of PDI-P's campaign team, said Bawaslu had incorrectly reported the data on the parties' campaign bank accounts.

"We already submitted the report for Samosir district on March 7," Arief said on Tuesday. "Bawaslu's data is inaccurate and we have urged them to publish an apology in the media for defamation."