[Kabar-indonesia] Acehnese eager to vote but lack information -survey

[Joyo at aol.com]

Acehnese eager to vote but lack information -survey

By Ahmad Pathoni

JAKARTA, November 8 (Reuters) - Most people in Indonesia's
tsunami-hit Aceh province want to vote in December's
landmark elections but many wrongly believe they are not
registered to do so, a survey released on Wednesday showed.

The ballot, the first ever direct vote for top posts in the
province, is another milestone in efforts to permanently end
a conflict that has killed 15,000 people since the Free Aceh
Movement (GAM) launched a rebellion against Jakarta in 1976.

Fifty-six percent of 1,233 Acehnese questioned said they
were very likely to vote in the Dec. 11 elections, with 33
percent saying they were somewhat likely to vote, a survey
by IFES, an international group promoting democracy, showed.

But 68 percent said they did not have very much information
about the election while 11 percent said they had no
information.

Only 30 percent said they were registered to vote, while 68
percent believed they were not registered and two percent
said they did not know.

The results suggested the election registration drive had
used names supplied by village heads, and other residency
lists, leaving individual voters unaware of their status,
IFES said in a statement.

Rakesh Sharma, IFES research manager, said election
officials would need to do more to inform voters about their
registration.

"Perception of registration status is important to determine
how prepared people feel for the election," he said in the
statement.

Separately at a news conference, the National Democratic
Institute (NDI) said an independent audit showed 86.9
percent of an estimated 2.5 million eligible voters in Aceh
were registered even though only two thirds of them were
aware of that fact.

The chief of the NDI's operations in Indonesia, Paul
Rowland, called the registration drive successful, given the
fact many Acehnese had been displaced by the December 2004
Indian Ocean tsunami and the insurgency.

"There's no country in the world with 100 percent voters'
registration. In a place where many people are displaced,
this is a good result," he said.

A former general and a former separatist rebel are among
eight candidates running for Aceh governor.

GAM and the Indonesian government signed a truce in August
2005 under Finnish mediation that paved the way for
involvement of former rebels in local Aceh politics after
they agreed to end their armed struggle for an independent
state.

The Helsinki agreement came about after months of talks
spurred by the tsunami that left around 170,000 Acehnese
dead or missing.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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