Camelia Pasandaran, Jakarta – The government said on Friday that it would begin verifying the eligibility of political parties to contest elections under tough new requirements in mid-January.
"The Ministry of Justice and Human Rights will open registration for verification on January 17, 2011," Justice Minister Patrialis Akbar said before a cabinet meeting at the president's office. He said the process would be completed by July.
The revised law on political parties, passed late on Thursday, tightens the requirements for political parties to contest elections. The most significant change is that parties intending to run in the 2014 polls now have six months to prove they have almost 1,000 members spread throughout the country's 33 provinces. Parties previously only needed 50 members to be officially recognized.
The amended law requires parties to have at least 30 registered members – married or at least 21 years of age – in each of the 33 provinces, or a total of 990 individual members.
Parties must also have representatives in each of the provinces, in 75 percent of the districts and in half of the subdistricts, along with permanent offices at each level.
Parties that fail to meet the six-month deadline can still be officially registered but will be unable to run in the 2014 elections, and will have to wait for the 2019 polls.
Patrialis said the verification process would cover both new and existing parties, regardless of their size. He said parties meeting the requirements would be officially validated by the ministry.
"Verification will depend on the political parties' initiative to establish offices in every district, to declare themselves to local governments and to receive acknowledgement of their party from the district head up to the governor level," Patrialis said.
"It was our political decision [to make these stipulations], so we should not question whether they burden the parties."
Patrialis further suggested the establishment of a court for dealing with verification appeals. "Political parties should have a court to settle problems. They can call it the political party court or whatever they like," he said. "The method of recruiting the court's members should also be transparent."