by: Terence Mordeno Grana *
UPON invitation of Indonesian President B.J. Habibie, the Philippine government sent a 108-member delegation composed of National Movement for Free Election (NAMFREL) voluteers, headed by mission chief Chairman Jose Concepcion and deputy chief of mission Gen. Thelmo Cunanan, to observe the general elections held on June 7, 1999.
This writer was lucky to be among the volunteers sent to cover the first ever free electoral exercise of the Indonesians after 44 years since their last democratic elections were conducted.
At our arrival on June 3, while enroute to our hotel from the Sukarno-Hatta International airport in Jakarta, we already witnessed the throng of red-clad rallyists almost from all ages swarming the city streets. Eventually, we learned that it was the designated day for the PDI-Perjuangan (the party of Megawati Sukarnoputri) to hold its party rally prior to the v-day (voting day).
We saw party loyalists dancing on the streets and chanting their party hymn with gusto, a la EDSA people power revolution, demonstrating their full support to the party cause, but with discipline.
Consequently, Golkar (the administration party) held also their rally the next day, but it was not as festive as the PDI’s. Take note that that day, Friday, was the last day of the campaign period.
The good thing about their political campaigns is that, immediately after the campaign period ended, you can see no trace of any garbage on the streets and campaign posters pasted anymore on the walls, streets and bridges because party members immediately cleaned-up before the campaign period expired - this is one lesson that we Filipinos have to learn from the Indonesians.
Two days prior to the elections, we were deployed to our respective areas of assignment and I was among the 23 sent to East Java. We took the one-hour-and-a-half domestic flight from Jakarta to Surabaya, the capital city of the province. Four of us, a priest, a university dean, a businessman and myself, were assigned to a small city called Jember - a four-hour smooth land trip from Surabaya, and I was specifically tasked to cover 12 kecamatans (their version of towns).
With me in a team was an Indonesian driver, an interpreter and an election monitoring officer (EMO) from Forum Rektor, their local counterpart of our NAMFREL. I was issued a sophisticated communications equipment, a hi-tech handy phone to be used for my periodic reporting.
We were introduced to the city chief of police of Jember who was very accom-modating and quick in offering us 2 personal police security each but we politely refused for our own individual reasons.
During the v-day, the military personnel were confined in their barracks but there were police present in the polling places to maintain peace and order in the areas.
I can say that the conduct of their elections was orderly because the proceedings really promptly started at seven o’clock in the morning of June 7, not 6:59 nor 7:01, and it all commenced with 45 minutes of prayer by the KPPS (their counterpart of our board of election inspectors (BEI’s)), asking Allah to intercede for the peaceful and orderly conduct of the elections, and the oath-taking of the KPPS and the party representatives which they call “saksi”.
At a given time, only 25 qualified voters were allowed inside the polling place to wait for the turn to cast their votes, which will be “replinished” at a time, and their names were called through a bullhorn. Before a voter could be allowed inside, he or she has to make certain that his/her name is in the list which was posted outside the TPS (polling place).
After a voter has already completed to cast his/her vote by punching the symbol of the party of his/her choice on the ballot with a six-inch nail, application of the indelible ink is now done by dipping his/her finger into the bottle of the ink, not just applied only on the nail cuticles. By the way, the Indonesians acknowledged that they adopted the idea of using the indelible ink from the Filipinos.
During the counting of votes at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, the KPPS read and showed to the saksi the vote on the ballot and in turn, the saksi record each figure. Seven members of the saksi signed the document recording the results of the election.
Come to think of it, our ballot boxes are made of metal material while theirs is just made of ordinary plywood but it could not be snatched because its size is very big.
Of the International observers like Americans, Australians, Europeans and Japanese, I could say that only we, the Filipino NAMFREL International observers were treated warmly and sincerely by the Indonesians than our other International counterparts.
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* Mr. Grana is a Supervising Monitoring Officer of the Bills and Index Service, House of Representatives Secretariat, Constitution Hills, Quezon City
