Jakarta – The Indonesian government and military said that planned riot-alert posts will be permanent features and were not being set up just to maintain peace in the election year, a report here said yesterday. "They are not just being established only for the general election. They will remain in existence afterwards," The Jakarta Post quoted armed forces chief General Feisal Tanjung as saying.

Indonesians will go to the polls on May 29.

Gen Feisal said the alert centres would be established in each of the more than 240 district military commands and would be overseen by the heads of the district commands.

The centres would also not take over the responsibilities of local security agencies or the police, but would deal with "preventive measures. If the provincial administration... considers it necessary to take action, the centre will forward its report to the police", he added.

President Suharto last week ordered that posts be established for people to pass on information about rumors and also inform the authorities about "who the people are who are spreading the rumors.

"Certain groups who want to create instability" have been behind recent mass riots, he said.

Indonesian officials have claimed that unrest erupted into rioting after rumors were spread in communities about ethnic or religious matters.

Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Soesilo Soedarman also said that the alert posts were part of a long-term plan and not just for the May elections.

"We don't want to see this nation endangered by upheaval," he said. "We are making every effort to prevent that from happening."

Indonesia has been rocked by three religious and ethnic riots since last October, which left more than a dozen people dead and scores injured.

Thousands of Muslims in the small East Java town of Situbondo took to the streets in October and burned more than 20 churches and Buddhist temples after a prosecutor asked for a five-year jail sentence – deemed too low by demonstrators – for a man accused of insulting Islam.

On December 26 thousands of Muslims went on a rampage in Tasikmalaya, West Java, angered by alleged police mistreatment of three Muslim teachers.

Four people died and over 100 buildings were burned and damaged.

Earlier this month unrest erupted in West Kalimantan when a mob of some 5,000 indigenous Dayak tribesmen burned and looted scores of homes and stores belonging to settlers who had migrated from the Indonesian island of Madura, north of Java.