Chee Soon Juan will leave for Indonesia tomorrow, as part of an international delegation led by the former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to monitor the June 7 elections.
The mission is organised by the National Democratic Institute and The Carter Centre in conjunction with Indonesia’s independent elections commission or KPU and other international observers. The more than 100-member delegation will be deployed to more than 30 monitoring sites around Indonesia to ensure that the voting process remains free and fair.
Observers will be on the look out for unfair practices such as vote buying, intimidation of voters, use of government resources in campaigning, etc. The international monitors will play an important role in supporting the efforts of those Indonesians who are working to provide a genuine election process in their country.
During his week-long visit, the undersigned hopes to gain a first-hand knowledge on how Indonesia’s fledgling independent electoral commission conducts elections in an impartial and unbiased manner. It is also the SDP’s hope that such an independent commission can be started in Singapore. It’s worth noting that Singapore’s Elections Department has all along been under the Prime Minister’s Office without any representation of political parties unlike in Indonesia today where all parties participate in the decision-making process of the elections commission.