Jakarta – Jailed Indonesian People's Democracy Party leader Budiman Sudjatmiko was barred from voting Monday, under rules prohibiting convicts serving more than five years from casting ballots, a prison official said. A duty officer at the Cipinang high security prison in Jakarta said Sudjatmiko, 29, and five other jailed party members were inelligible to vote as they had all been sentenced to more than five years.

"It said clearly in the 1999 election rules, Clause 29 that anyone with sentences of more than five years are inelligible to vote," duty officer Iwan Santoso told AFP.

In 1997, under the rule of former president Suharto, Budiman was slapped with a 13 year sentence for allegedly having attempted a government coup in the previous year.

After Suharto's fall in May of last year he was offered a pardon – but refused insisting it was Suharto who had broken the law, and he would accept nothing less than amnesty. The government however did not prevent the PRD from running in the polls.

Another prison guard said Sudjatmiko and other PRD members were seen hanging around the prison polling station where other short-term prisoners were voting.

There were 1,017 voters eligible voters in Cipinang and Salemba prisons in Jakarta, the Antara state news agency said. All 509 of Cipinang's eligible voters voted, but it was not clear how many in Salemba prison's 508 eligible voters actually took part.