JAKARTA, 9 April 2009: About 171 million Indonesians are to vote today to elect members of four legislative assemblies including for the People’s Representative Council or Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR or Parliament) and the Regional Representatives Council or Dewan Perwakilan Daerah (DPD).
Simultaneous voting will be carried out to elect representatives for the DPR Level I and Level II to carry out autonomous duties in areas of the country which has a population of 230 million people.
Voters will cast votes at 512,000 voting centres in all 33 provinces and the centres will open from 7am till noon.
The country’s General Election Commission (KPU) has five million workers on duty not including tens of thousands of police and military personnel and hundreds of thousands of monitors and observers from contesting parties.
As many as 38 political parties are contesting at the national level while in Aceh six more local political parties are contesting in district level elections, bringing the total number of political parties to 44.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his family will vote in Cikeas, Bogor while vice-president Muhammad Jusuf Kalla and his family will vote in Menteng, Jakarta.
Also voting will be almost 1.5 million Indonesians working abroad including about 800,000 registered in Malaysia who will cast their votes at the Indonesian embassy in Kuala Lumpur.
In this general election, Indonesians will elect candidates for 560 parliamentary seats from 11,301 candidates.
They will also elect 132 persons for the Regional Representatives Council from a total of 1,116 candidates from around the country of more than 17,000 islands.
Voters must also choose from among tens of thousands of candidates for 1,998 provincial seats and from hundreds of thousands of candidates for 15,750 district and town seats. — Bernama
See also:
Elections, Indonesian-style
Gerindra’s rise in Indonesian politics
Election lethargy in Indonesia
