Jakarta. The window for registrations for Indonesia’s presidential election in July will open next month, the national polling body announced on Tuesday.
Ferry Kurnia, a member of the General Elections Commission, or KPU, said in Jakarta that the registration period would run from May 18 to 20.
After the registration, the KPU will conduct a verification and administrative check on the documents submitted by the applicants, which should take around days to complete, Ferry said.
KPU will also carry out health check on the candidates.
“For the checkup, we will work together with the Indonesian Doctors Association,” or IDI, he said. “The IDI will set out the health criteria and appoint the hospitals to conduct the tests.”
The commission will also allow the candidates a chance to amend their submissions if any of the required documents are missing.
An announcement of the candidates allowed to run in the July 9 election will be made by June 10, Ferry said.
Under electoral law, only a party or a coalition that wins 25 percent of votes in the legislative election or 20 percent of seats at the House of Representatives is eligible to nominate a presidential candidate.
Quick counts from the April 9 legislative poll — official results are still pending — indicate that none of the 12 parties in the running won enough votes to nominate a candidate unaided, with the leading group, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, or PDI-P, getting around 19 percent of votes.
Several parties, including the PDI-P, are already in coalition talks with other parties. The PDI-P’s Joko Widodo, the governor of Jakarta, is the hot favorite to win the presidential election, ahead of Prabowo Subianto of the Great Indonesia Movement Party, or Gerindra, and Aburizal Bakrie of the Golkar Party.
If no candidate wins a clear majority, or 50 percent, in the July 9 ballot, a runoff vote will be held between the top two candidates.
The new president will be inaugurated on Oct. 20.
Source/Fuente: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/kpu-opens-presidential-candidate-reg...
