Indonesia's progress towards national elections has had a rather inasupicious start ... with the Indonesian Electoral Commission rejecting calls to extend enrolment deadlines.

Presenter/Interviewer: James Panichi Speakers: Dr Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin, General Elections Commission chairman; Dr Robert Elson, professor in South East Asian history, University of Queensland.

Panichi: According to some reports, many of the almost 9,000 candidates for the April legislative elections have failed to meet the new registration requirements.

It was the first time candidates had been asked to present the Electoral Commission – known as the KPU – with a medical certificate, a declaration of personal wealth and a certificate attesting to a lack of a criminal record.

But Dr Nazaruddin says the Electoral Commission is determined to stick to its schedule.

Nazaruddin: "We have planned everything and everything must go according to our agenda. Every party and every candidate must follow that agenda very tightly."

Panichi: Although many of the candidates say that there is just too much bureaucracy to get through and they just didn't have time to do it...

Nazaruddin: "Well, we have been giving them enough time. In fact, there has been more than three months to start collecting all the initiatives needed."

Panichi: In other words, the KPU doesn't intend to bend the rules for anyone.

The Commission believes all candidates – who in December passed the first stage of the eligibility screening – were given ample warning of the new requirements.

Nazaruddin: "They were given this information a long time ago and they must also know about the law. The law was passed about ten months ago. So, they should know everything they need to, to follow these elections."

Panichi: Under the new laws, Indonesia is facing either two or three national elections this year. The April ballot could be the first of two to elect legislators to the national assembly, and literally thousands more to a variety of provincial and district assemblies.

The KPU's mammoth task is the result of changes introduced to increase political accountability – including the greater scrutiny of both candidates and parties. As a result, only 40 political parties have been accepted out of a field of 100.

Robert Elson is professor in South East Asian history at Australia's University of Queensland.

Elson: "It is a more convoluted and elaborated process in Indonesia, simply because of the long history of authoritarian rule under the new order and its sudden relaxation after 1998 brought forward a great welling up of popular sentiment for participatory democracy of various kinds.

"The result was that there was a proliferation of parties. This [vetting process] is simply a measure of the Indonesian authorities desire to curtail what was seen to be a divisive proliferation of parties and also to ensure that those parties which did contest the election did have some kind of serious, or reasonably serious coverage and depths in terms of their memberships."

Panichi: But while changes to party and candidate elegibility may be attracting some attention, the most important change – the direct election of the president – is likely to be the KPU's biggest challenge.

Under the old system, it was up to MPs elected to the legislature to choose the executive. This year, for the first time, the electorate will have the final say.

Elson: "This process is an attempt to democratise the presidential election, because the president remains a very powerful figure in Indonesia. The political elite, if you like, thought with some justification that a position of that power needed to be exposed to some kind of popular process of gaining a mandate.

"And that's the reason for this very decisive change in Indonesian politics for 2004."