Jakarta – The registration of millions of voters for Indonesia's crucial June 7 elections got off to a sluggish start here Monday with few registrants and many areas awaiting delivery of registration papers.
Poll officials announced Sunday voter registration for the polls, the first since the fall of former president Suharto, would begin Monday morning at schools and and government offices nationwide.
For most of the country's estimated 125 million eligible voters it is the first registration, as previous elections have relied simply on house calls by election officials.
In Jakarta's Menteng district area Monday, there was no evidence of voters registering. Most people said they would wait for officials to come to their houses to register.
In the city's Rawamangun area, more than one neighbourhood office said no forms had been delivered.
"This morning members of parties had a preparation meeting here, but then they left and none of them has returned," said a neighborhood security guard in a post which will be used as a registration office. He said the forms should have arrived there at two o'clock, but had not. Registration lasts for one week.
In a second neighbourhood office where registration was underway, only a few housewives turned up, and officials said they hoped more would arrive after finishing work.
"Since morning we have registered 45 people," said Susilo, an official of the registration office in Utan Kayu neighborhood in East Jakarta.
He said several posts were not yet ready, and in the preparatory stage. In the North Sumatra main city of Medan, neighbourhood officials were quoted by the Suara Pembaruan evening daily as saying they still did not know how registration should be conducted.
"We are still studying the procedure. The neighbourhood chief is having a meeting to discuss the matter," Suyadi, a local government official, was quoted as saying by the daily.
Meanwhile the Japanese government on Monday pledged some 31 million dollars through the UN Development Program (UNDP) as technical and financial assistance for the polls.
The UNDP said in a statement that a memorandum of understanding was signed at its Jakarta office and came on top of some 80 million dollars already pledged from 16 other donor countries.
According to UNDP Jakarta represntative Ravi Rajan, the amount is the largest single contribution received by the UNDP, and constitutes over a third of all funds from international donors.
Rajan said the Japanese fund will be used in part for special undeletable ink, modern technology equipment required for the tabulating and reporting of election results, and poll-worker training.
The UNDP, under an agreement with the Indonesian government, is coordinating donations from foreign countries for the polls for the elections, which are slated to be followed in November with the selection of a new president.
Last week the UN body handed over the first 600,000 dollars of aid to an independent monitoring group to set up secretariats in 20 of Indonesia's 27 provinces.
President B.J. Habibie has pledged that the elections, to be contested by 48 parties, will be the free and fair. During the 32 years of Suharto's rule, his Golkar party, backed by the army and the civil service, swept every poll and subsequently rubber stamped him for seven consecutive five-year terms.