Under-the-table Elections 2009
Yesterday was parliamentary elections day in my country.
My family almost didn't get to exercise our rights because our Ketua RT (something like... neighbourhood rep, I think) failed to register us in the voters' census. We moved in this neighbourhood fairly recently, so I went and checked the Kelurahan (village) voters' register a few months back. Didn't find our names there, as I suspected. The election committee guy at Kelurahan told me to register through our neighboorhood rep, so my brother did, and was told to just sit back and wait for invitations.
Turned out that the lazy (beep) never updated to the Kelurahan office, so until the last second we didn't receive our invitations. My grandma was the most furious--she had never missed a vote ever since the first election in 1955--and was all ready to chew out the election committee people at the ballots on Thursday morning.
And so my brother went to the voting site early morning, tried to appeal with the committee group leader. I don't know how it went, but my brother said the man assured him he can include us in the voters' list using our ID cards. Apparently people not registered in voter list is a nation-wide occurence, in our neighbourhood alone, from around 400 eligible voters, only about half are registered. It's really a disgrace, and I don't understand why the national Elections Committee could fail so much because my brother said there's no such problem in the 2004 Elections. At that time, I myself was still in Singapore, so the administration was easier; I believe the Embassy simply uses immigration data to send out invitations.
The man who assured my brother, though, also smiled and shaked my brother's hand and gave him the namecard of a Provincial Parliament candidate from the Golkar party. *facepalm* (To clarify, we're voting in 4 ballots: National, Provincial and Regency Parliament, and the DPD, which I don't know how to translate into English)
Under-the-table deals aside, the five of us: my parents, my brother, my grandma and I finally were able to vote. I didn't vote for namecard guy of course.
My family almost didn't get to exercise our rights because our Ketua RT (something like... neighbourhood rep, I think) failed to register us in the voters' census. We moved in this neighbourhood fairly recently, so I went and checked the Kelurahan (village) voters' register a few months back. Didn't find our names there, as I suspected. The election committee guy at Kelurahan told me to register through our neighboorhood rep, so my brother did, and was told to just sit back and wait for invitations.
Turned out that the lazy (beep) never updated to the Kelurahan office, so until the last second we didn't receive our invitations. My grandma was the most furious--she had never missed a vote ever since the first election in 1955--and was all ready to chew out the election committee people at the ballots on Thursday morning.
And so my brother went to the voting site early morning, tried to appeal with the committee group leader. I don't know how it went, but my brother said the man assured him he can include us in the voters' list using our ID cards. Apparently people not registered in voter list is a nation-wide occurence, in our neighbourhood alone, from around 400 eligible voters, only about half are registered. It's really a disgrace, and I don't understand why the national Elections Committee could fail so much because my brother said there's no such problem in the 2004 Elections. At that time, I myself was still in Singapore, so the administration was easier; I believe the Embassy simply uses immigration data to send out invitations.
The man who assured my brother, though, also smiled and shaked my brother's hand and gave him the namecard of a Provincial Parliament candidate from the Golkar party. *facepalm* (To clarify, we're voting in 4 ballots: National, Provincial and Regency Parliament, and the DPD, which I don't know how to translate into English)
Under-the-table deals aside, the five of us: my parents, my brother, my grandma and I finally were able to vote. I didn't vote for namecard guy of course.