Jakarta – The Justice and Human Rights Ministry will verify the validity of political parties running in the 2009 general election only after a new law on parties is enacted, to minimize spending on administrative tasks, an official said.

"There could be substantial changes in the new law on political parties, especially in regard to the criteria for the establishment of political parties. Therefore, we'll wait until the law is enacted," director of constitutional law affairs at the Justice Ministry, Aidir Amin Daud, said as quoted by detik.com news portal Saturday.

"The verification process will be very costly. Therefore, we only want to do it once," he said.

Aidir said the registration of political parties would be done in April 2008, with the verification process taking place a month earlier.

A bill on political parties is currently being reviewed at the House of Representatives and is expected to be enacted before the end of this year.

Aidir said the government had allocated Rp 28 billion for the verification process, which will include visits to regions to examine parties' organizational structures as they had reported in their statutes.

More than 60 political parties have registered with the Justice Ministry to run in the 2009 election.