Elections are essential to democracy. The processes and institutions involved in elections, be it legislative or executive at national or local level, must bear a certain degree of confidence in order for the election results to be accepted, creating authority and bringing legitimacy.
Recent years have witness the rise of election monitoring activities by citizens as the final vanguard of democracy. Monitoring by groups of local citizens can help in detering violations and promoting the integrity of the election process and its results.
IPCOS have been involved in election monitoring since the 1999 General Election by providing trainers and consultants to Election Monitoring Organizations of various scales, both national and local, great and small. This involvement includes actively supporting the Jakarta chapter of Independent Election Monitoring Committee (KIPP Jakarta) in planning, organizing, recruitment and training, including providing handbooks and reference materials for election monitors.
With the advent of local election for chief executives (PILKADA), the majority of election monitoring operations will shift from a national scale operation to one a a smaller local scale. National election monitoring organizations will have to accommodate this change and strengthen their local chapters. The change will also give birth to new local election monitoring organizations.
Election monitoring operations are by nature highly-centralized, catering to the needs of monitoring national elections. This situation caused local chapters of national election monitoring organizations to be sidelined and play only a relatively minor role in planning for such operations. On the other hand, new emerging local organizations are foreign to planning and managing a monitoring operation due to their sheer inexperience.
After completing the training, participants will be able to use the tools provided throughout the training to plan, organize, and manage an election monitoring operation in their respective areas.
Participants of the training were CSO activists from provinces or regencies that are scheduled to hold local elections in the second half of 2007 or 2008.
And one participant from a neighbouring country, Timor Leste
Early October 2006, IPCOS selected provinces and/or regencies/municipality which will be conducting their election of executive chief (governor/regent/mayor) in the second half of 2007 or in 2008.
IPCOS prepared a proposal and submitted it to FES in the early of November 2006 and began with preparations as soon as FES agreed to cooperate in the project. A few adjustments needed to be made on the plan as the original proposal was to conduct the training after a comprehensive manual is written and published.
IPCOS then continue with the preparation of the training syllabi and organizing the training.
The training programme was conducted in two full days (08:30-21:00), divided into five 90 minutes sessions. An introductory session providing a general outline on elections both local and national from the standpoint of the Election Commission (KPU) was conducted in the opening night prior to the two days.
The first session was a refresher course on basic Project Management. The aim was to remind the participants that election monitoring operations are basically projects, thus must be approached and organized with good Project Management. The session was mainly a lecture by the session's lead trainer followed by Q&A sessions.
The second session of the first day was a another refresher course. This session on statistical principles was aimed to strengthen the understanding and commitment on the need to use sound statistical principles in conducting election monitoring operations. The session was mainly a lecture by the session's lead trainer followed by Q&A sessions.
The third session of the first day provided a more detailed explanation on the stages of a local election from the viewpoint of local election commissions. The session was mainly a lecture by the session's lead trainer followed by Q&A sessions.
The fourth session of the first day provided a counterpoint explanation on the stages of an election from the viewpoint of election monitoring organizations. The session was mainly a lecture by the session's lead trainer followed by Q&A sessions.
The last session of the first day was a practice session where the lead trainer started with a short explanation on the election monitoring cycle and proceeded to emphasize on the need to conduct project planning. The session was mainly a group activity where participants worked together in groups to complete the given tasks.
The second day started with two session on Personnel Management, providing the participants with the principles and real-world examples of the processes needed to deploy and manage election monitors effectively. The sessions was mainly a group activity where participants worked together in groups to complete the given tasks.
The third and fourth session of the second day was on Information Management, providing the participants with the principles and examples of the processes involved in planning and managing information in an election monitoring operation. The sessions was mainly a group activity where participants worked together in groups to complete the given tasks.
The last session was a review and general session where the participants expressed their needs, opinions and plans.
The training programme was extremely fast-paced due to the sheer volume of the subjects needed to be covered. The two days provided for the training was less than adequate to properly instruct and train the participants on the highly intricate tasks of managing an election monitoring operation.
The participation was extremely pleasing, with participants attending fully and actively taking part in every activity and tasks given.
None of the participant thought that the training was useless, most found the sessions to be informative and important in increasing their understanding and skill in managing election monitoring operations, and are looking forward to a more in-depth training on this subject.
There is a similar tone of regret among the participants that not enough attention is being given to local elections. That is why they were extremely pleased that they could participate in such a training.
To overcome the limitation of time, IPCOS handed out a CD-ROM to every participant. The disc contain many documents relating to election monitoring.
In the future, this training should be expanded to a week long training to provide the necessary depth to truly enable the participants to effectively manage election monitoring operations.
IPCOS aimed at a 50-50 balance and tried to fulfill the aim by informing and reminding each contingent about the need for gender balance, but in the end only a ratio of 8:18 was reached.
The training was held as scheduled, April 18-20, 2007.
The participants fully attend the training sessions and actively participate in each task given.
Questionnaire returned showed a high rating approval of the training, citing the main weakness is the limited time available. Participants also showed their interest in participating in a similar and/or more in-depth training on the subject.
More attention should be given to local elections. The interest shown by the training participants showed a real need of spreading the knowledge and skill to the far reaches of Indonesia. Trainings with more time should be made available and organized throughout the country.
At the very least a set of comprehensive and practical material on building, planning, and managing local election operations should be published and distributed to enable local organizations in performing responsible election monitoring. A network of support should also be made available to provide these local organization with knowledge and technical skills to conduct better election monitoring operations.
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