NGO Says Millions of Migrants Can’t Vote

January 29, 2009

An expert on migrants alleged on Wednesday that more than five million Indonesians eligible to vote in upcoming elections have not been registered.
Anis Hidayah, director of Migrant Care, said his organization had requested that the General Elections Commission, or KPU, give these eligible voters the right to participate.
“We want the commission to respect the rights of these voters,” she said, adding that most of the unregistered voters were in Malaysia.
Indonesia will hold legislative elections this April and a presidential election in July.
Bambang Eka Cahya Widodo of the Elections Supervisory Board, or Bawaslu, said funding problems might have limited the KPU’s efforts to register such migrant workers.
“Poor registration of overseas voters was due to the late disbursement of funds,” he said. “Even though the funding was adequate, it was less effective as it came late.”
KPU member Andi Nurpati said the commission would not re-open the registration of overseas voters.
“We have already finished the registration stage,” she said, adding that unregistered migrants were likely illegal workers.
“If the workers have work permits, they must have been registered at Indonesian embassies abroad. If they are registered at the embassies, they’re automatically registered as voters,” she said.
“For sure there might be problems such as workers who are highly mobile. When they move to other places and forget to report their new address we cannot register them,” she added. “In that case, it is not our fault.”
Besides the high number of unregistered voters, Migrant Care also complained to Bawaslu that voting carried out overseas was prone to vote rigging.
“There is no guarantee that registered voters will be able to use their voting rights properly,” Anis said.
According to her, posting ballot papers was not effective as many failed to arrive at their destinations on time and were prone to manipulation.
“The supervision mechanism for overseas voting is lacking,” she said.
Bambang said that Bawaslu had reminded KPU to pay more attention to the overseas voting process.
“We’ve warned KPU that there are a lot of potential problems in overseas voting,” he said.
“The main problem is one of supervision, as voters are scattered in many different regions all over the world. Meanwhile, the number of election monitors is limited,” he said.