Jenny Grant, Yogyakarta – The scene would have been impossible at the last elections. At a high-level meeting in a university campus, a long-haired activist told the city's Attorney-General that his monitoring group had found irregularities in the voter registration process.

The activist, Aloyisius Wesnuhardana, then turned to the city's police chief and asked him how he planned to protect his team of volunteer election monitors.

Both men gave respectful answers to the former chemistry student who only two years previously had failed to get an election monitoring project off the ground under the Government's highly manipulated New Order electoral system.

Now Mr Wesnuhardana's Independent Committee for Election Monitoring is leading the push in the Central Java city Yogyakarta that analysts say is the political barometer of the nation.

"So far we have found parents who registered for their children and election officials who registered people before they had the proper forms," said the activist, who aims to have 1,000 monitors working under him by June 7.

Election supervisors in the special region of Yogyakarta have already found evidence of manipulation in the electoral system, and now they are not afraid to talk about it.

By far the worst violation is in the village of Gunung Kidul, where poll officials handed out voting cards to people before they registered.

"We don't know how many cards because we don't have access to the records," Mr Wesnuhardana said. He maintains that such misdemeanours could favour the ruling Golkar party, which has told villages in the Imogiri area that the highly respected Sultan of Yogyakarta supports it. That could swing the balance away from other parties.

Vice-chairman of Yogyakarta's election committee Mohammad Mahfud said the problems had so far only been administrative and could be fixed. He said the main stumbling block was timing.

"We don't have enough time to organise these elections. Voter registration forms were late coming from Jakarta and the financial system is still unclear," Mr Mahfud said.

On the streets, Yogyakarta's 3.2 million residents appear keen to cast their ballots in the elections.

Thousands of brightly coloured flags flutter above the Dutch-style rooftops of this slow-paced city. Election banners dominate the more than 50 university campuses in what is essentially a student town.

The smiling face of the Sultan beams down from a giant billboard in the main commercial district.

Hardojo, the driver of a dokar, or horse-drawn carriage, said he had already enrolled to vote on June 7. "This time, our vote will mean something," he said laughing.