Poll watchdogs urged the General Elections Commission (KPU) on Monday to reverse its decision to allow four more parties to contest next year's legislative elections.

The decision violated the 2008 elections law and would undermine the legitimacy of the election results, they argued.

People's Voter Education Network (JPPR) national coordinator Jeirry Sumampow accused the KPU of making "certain deals' with four minor parties.

"It is a fatal decision. The KPU sells its authority for the sake of these parties," he told a discussion with journalists.

"The KPU should drop this if they want a legitimate election next year," he asserted.

Jeirry could not elaborate on the "deals" between the KPU and the four parties — the Freedom Party, the Indonesian Nahdlatul Ummah Party (PNUI), the Islamic United Party and the Labor Party.

However, he said the KPU may have been involved in "money politics" during the verification process last month to determine the eligibility of political parties to contest the 2009 legislative elections.

The KPU made its decision the day after the State Administrative Court issued a verdict ordering it to allow the four parties to contest the upcoming elections, along with 34 others, which had already been listed as eligible.

Legal expert Topo Santoso of the University of Indonesia said the verdict was legally flawed as it was handed out by the State Administrative Court.

"The 2008 elections law only authorizes district and high courts and the Constitutional Court to handle legal cases related to election matters," Topo, who is a former member of the Elections Supervisory Board, said at the same discussion.

Topo also expressed concern over the State Administrative Court's lack of understanding of the legal aspects of electoral matters.

"If they had read the Constitutional Court verdict, the State Administrative Court should have rejected the petition from the four parties," he said.

Meanwhile, Yulianto from the Consortium on National Law Reform urged the KPU to hire legal experts to deal with legal problems arising, ahead of the elections.

"We conclude that one of the weaknesses of the KPU lies in legal matters, as none of its members have legal experience," he said.

The JPPR also called on the Elections Supervisory Board to take position on the KPU's decision to recognize the four parties as being eligible.

"They should warn the KPU to avoid such decisions in future," he said.

The KPU is now under pressure from the My Republic Party, which similarly won a legal battle through the State Administrative Court on Friday.

Party members stormed the KPU office on Monday, demanding the polls body should also include their political group in the list of eligible parties for the 2009 election.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla has opted to remain silent about the possibility of his joining forces with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for the 2009 presidential election.

Representatives of the Young Generation of Democratic Party (GMD), the youth wing of Yudhoyono's Democratic Party, on Wednesday raised the question in a meeting with Kalla at the vice presidential office.

"We asked Kalla whether he would run with the President but he gave no response," GMD chairman Lucky Sastrawiria said after the meeting.

The Democratic Party will hold a plenary meeting from August 22 to 24 in Jakarta, during which it will officially nominate Yudhoyono and Kalla as presidential and vice presidential candidates for the second time running.

Kalla will open the meeting, with Yudhoyono closing it.

Although nominated by a coalition of minor parties, Yudhoyono and Kalla won the first round of the 2004 presidential election, and went on to win the run-off against incumbent Megawati Soekarnoputri and her running mate, Nahdlatul Ulama chairman Hasyim Muzadi.

Indonesia will hold its second ever direct presidential election in the first week of July 2009, three months after the legislative election.

An amendment to the Constitution requires presidential and vice presidential candidates to be nominated by political parties or a coalition of parties.

The Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI-P), in a coalition with several other parties, has already named PDI-P chairwoman Megawati as a presidential candidate.

PDI-P controls the second largest number of legislative seats. The largest number is held by the Golkar Party, which kicked off its election campaign on Wednesday.

The ceremony was marked by the release of 2,300 yellow balloons, 23 of them containing coupons with cell phones as prizes, and 230 doves. The figures represent Golkar's number 23 for the legislative election.

"We are determined to heed all campaign rules issued by the General Elections Commission (KPU). We will not organize a general campaign meeting until March 2009," Golkar chairman Kalla said.

He called on Golkar members with state jobs to take leave and report to the KPU if they would wished to be involved in campaigning.

The KPU requires all state officials, including the President, Vice President and ministers, to take leave when campaigning and not use state facilities for campaign purposes.

Despite a series of defeats for Golkar in regional elections, Kalla expressed optimism the party would maintain its winning run in the legislative election.

After a year-long delay, the government will publish an environmental performance ratings list of 516 companies, with up to 26 percent of them expected to fare poorly.

The corporate environmental performance rating's (Proper) lowest ranks are "black" and "red", and are awarded to companies that have taken no action toward controlling air and water pollution.

"The remaining 74 percent of participating companies managed to get green and blue labels, but none of them attained the highest score of gold," Surna Djajadiningrat, chairman of Proper's advisory board, said Wednesday.

State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar said the rankings were still subject to change because the Proper team would "visit companies with low scores".

"We need to ensure there will be no complaints from companies listed in black and red after the announcement of the ratings," he said.

"I will submit the final report to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on July 24 before making the public announcement."

The Proper scheme assesses each company's performance in controlling air and water pollution, as well as their compliance to the Environmental Impact Analysis (Amdal) and their implementation of Community Social Responsibility (CSR) programs.

Corporate participation in the Proper scheme is voluntary, and includes companies from the mining, oil and gas, manufacturing, pulp and paper and service sectors.

Proper was first launched in 1995. It uses a color-based rating system to rank companies, the highest being gold, followed by green, blue, red and black. The environment ministry failed to announce the Proper ratings last year.

It acknowledged Proper's efforts to expand the rating into seven colors by adding green minus and blue minus in a bid to attract more companies to participate.

The government was also forced to drop the rating between 1998 and 2002 because of the Asian economic crisis.

Rasio Rido Sani, secretary of Proper's technical team, said the scheme was a powerful incentive for companies to adopt stricter pollution controls.

"However, firms with poor environmental performance under the Proper rating do not face legal sanctions," he said.

"It is purely a matter of reputation. The ratings act as an incentive for companies to improve their reputations."

Rasio said several banks, including Bank Indonesia (BI), the central bank, now listed a Proper rating as a prerequisite to granting loans.

He said companies rated "black" for two years running would be categorized as default.

It seems the government has developed a fondness for exploiting the hot topic of climate change to secure foreign loans, then channeling the money elsewhere — and environmentalists want it to stop.

Instead, if Indonesia wants fresh foreign funds, it should apply existing international mechanisms on emissions reductions, through which developing nations can get financial incentives from rich countries, Greenomics Indonesia says.

"There are no compelling reasons for Indonesia to seek foreign loans in the name of mitigating climate change. It really does not make sense," Greenomics executive director Elfian Effendi told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

"The government must revoke its plans (to seek new foreign loans), or use existing mechanisms to get financial aid and technical assistance from wealthy nations."

Rahmat Waluyanto, director general of debt management at the Finance Ministry, said the government had received loans worth US$200 million from French financial institution Agence Francaise de Developpement and $300 million from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation — all for climate change programs.

But that is not where the funds are headed.

"The funds will go to the state budget," Rahmat said.

That is, they will be used to cover the state budget deficit, forecast in the revised 2008 budget to reach Rp 94.5 trillion ($10.24 billion).

He said the government expected to secure Rp 26.4 trillion in program loans this year.

As of June, the government had received $400 million in loans, or 15 percent of its target.

The Post's sources at the Forestry Ministry and the State Ministry for the Environment said these loans would not be used to finance climate change programs.

"With the loans, don't expect too much to go toward better mitigation efforts. The money will be spent elsewhere, including to pay the direct cash assistance for poor people introduced after the fuel price rise," a source said.

Mahendra Siregar from the Coordinating Ministry for the Economy said the country's climate change mitigation and adaptation programs had been financed by the state budget.

"We are committed to not using foreign money to fund climate change programs. We will use the loans obtained through the issue of climate change to cover the budget deficit only," said Mahendra, who was also part of Indonesia's negotiator team during the UN climate change conference in Bali last year.

Indonesia is the current president of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the world's most authoritative body on the climate change issue.

The UNFCCC requires rich nations to provide financial assistance for developing and poor nations to help them reduce emissions and adapt to the effects of warmer temperatures.

The Kyoto Protocol binds only rich nations to reducing emissions.

Developing and poor nations can participate in emissions reduction programs including through the clean development mechanism (CDM). In return, they receive cash injections.

Indonesia, the world's third-largest forestry nation, could also pull in huge dollars through voluntary markets from carbon selling under reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

A coalition of green groups has repeatedly called on wealthy nations to stop providing loans to developing countries before involving them in emissions reductions.

The coalition, including the Indonesian Environment Forum (Walhi), the Indonesian Biodiversity Foundation (Kehati), the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL), Forest Watch Indonesia, Greenpeace Southeast Asia and Friends of the Earth, first made a statement on debt relief at last year's ministerial meeting on climate change in Bogor, West Java.

Negotiators from 170 countries will discuss how to manage the transboundary traffic of hazardous waste during a five-day conference in Bali starting Monday.

Indonesia is set to break long-deadlocked talks on ban amendments prohibiting the import and export of all hazardous waste.

Indonesian chief negotiator Agus Purnomo said a new breakthrough was urgently needed to resolve long-debated issues including ban amendments and ship dismantling.

"Many hope the Bali meeting will breakthrough the ban amendment which has been deadlocked for about 20 years. We can no longer stick to old negotiations on this matter," he told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

"We hope to reach a compromise among negotiators on the Basel ban."

Agus said State Minister for Environment Rachmat Witoelar will host an informal meeting with his foreign counterparts and negotiators to compromise on solutions to end the deadlock.

Rachmat will serve as president for the ninth Conference of Parties (COP) of the Basel Convention on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal.

The Basel ban was adopted as an amendment to the convention in 1995. It requires the export and import of all hazardous wastes to be banned to protect human health and the environment against their adverse effects.

However, only 62 member countries have so far ratified the amendment, including Indonesia.

Agus said many developing countries, including Thailand that has set up waste management facilities, disagreed with the Basel ban since they lack hazardous waste to process, while some rich nations are prepared to export their hazardous wastes to other countries for cheaper processing.

International activist groups, including Greenpeace and Basel Action Network, have repeatedly called on Basel parties to enforce the ban amendment immediately to prevent further environmental damage.

"The need for the Basel Ban Amendment is now more pressing than at any point in history," Basel Action Network said in a statement recently.

The Bali conference on hazardous waste will take place from June 23 to 27 and is expected to issue a so-called Bali Declaration.

"We hope the declaration will be a road map on how to resolve pending issues in Basel Conventions," Agus said.

Parties to the convention meet every two years.

The Indonesian government has said as the world longest coastal area, the Basel convention has been crucial for Indonesia.

Agus said the contentious issues subject to heated debate would include the dismantling of obsolete ships.

"It is important for Indonesia since we have about 200 dockyards where the dismantling of ships could damage the health of people working in the ships. There must be procedures to dismantle the obsolete ships," he said.

A policy to guide the government in taking over military businesses will be completed by September, according to the national team responsible for the report.

Team chairman Erry Ryana Hardjapamekas said his group had received strong support in tackling its tasks.

"I am confident we can complete the job in four months because we are receiving support from Indonesian Military (TNI) leaders and the Defense Ministry as well as from the Finance Ministry," he said after a discussion on military businesses here Tuesday.

Erry said the Finance Ministry had agreed to increase the defense budget once the government took over the military enterprises.

The TNI currently manages 1,520 business units, 1,071 cooperatives and 25 foundations across the country.

Experts said many of the businesses had collapsed after years of mismanagement.

Erry said his team would recruit dozens of university students to help speed up the mapping of military businesses.

"We plan to involve about 70 students from the National Administration Institute. We will also invite international auditors to verify our findings," he said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono set up the team to transfer military businesses in April, four years after the House of Representatives passed the military law.

The 2004 law requires the Indonesian military to withdraw from business by 2009.

The team is tasked with identifying military businesses, formulating policies to transfer them to the state and issuing recommendations for the President.

The President will then set up another team to implement the transfer the military enterprises.

Erry said his team would verify data on legal businesses only.

"We will not touch illegal businesses run by a group or personnel from the military," he said.

The military has long complained about the low defense budget and poor conditions for soldiers.

Experts have said the military's role in business could create conflicts of interest and undermine the professionalism of soldiers, whose main task is to protect the country.

They have called on the government to ban all military businesses and to increase the defense budget and improve soldiers' conditions.

Jaleswari Pramodawardani of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) said military businesses contributed less than 1.3 percent of the TNI budget.

She said Indonesia needed to emulate moves by China, which took serious steps to get its soldiers out of business by improving their conditions and increasing the defense budget.

"Since the new management system, China has become the country with the second largest defense budget after the United States," she said.

Speaking at a two-day symposium on defense affairs here Wednesday, Centre for Strategic and International Studies senior researcher Kusnanto Anggoro said the Defense Ministry has been implementing "slow-paced reform".

To speed up the process, he said, the ministry and the TNI should restructure their systems to pave the way for progressive development and to reduce the number of personnel for efficiency.

"First, the ministry should start employing civilians rather than military-based personnel. Most civilians offer progressive and creative solutions," he said.

"Furthermore, the ministry and the TNI should reduce their personnel to achieve budget efficiency. The budget can later be used for performance improvement."

Kusnanto said about 90,000 of the Army's 150,000 personnel were idle and of no use.

Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono has strongly criticized statements by politicians and experts opposing President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's decision to raise fuel prices.

He said media coverage of the price increase and its impact had also been unfair.

"With all respect to experts and politicians, their statements on the fuel price rise policy are hypocritical. In reality, they acknowledge the President's courage in taking such a bold move," he said in a press conference Tuesday.

The minister is upbeat the public will come to respect the unpopular policy because it was designed to prevent the state budget from collapsing.

"He (Yudhoyono) is a good person. He dared to make the decision to raise fuel prices for the sake of the poor, even though it goes against the views of the experts who criticized him," Juwono said.

The government raised fuel prices by an average 28.7 percent last week in an effort to help salvage the state budget, which has been strained by soaring crude oil prices. The price of oil has passed US$133 per barrel — more than double last year's price.

Under the policy, Premium gasoline rose to Rp 6,000 (65 US cents) a liter, up from Rp 4,500. A liter of diesel fuel rose from Rp 4,300 to Rp 5,500 and kerosene from Rp 2,000 to Rp 2,500.

The government is providing low-income families with cash assistance of Rp 100,000 per month until the end of the year to help offset the impact of the price rise.

The fuel price rise has sparked protests nationwide.

Juwono said experts and politicians had delivered unbalanced perspectives through television talk shows and advertisements.

"If I were one of the advertisers, I would ask myself whether the message in the ads would please or displease people," he said without providing further details.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla earlier protested against an advertisement run by former general Wiranto. The ad says President Yudhoyono had promised not to increase fuel prices.

Juwono said the global price of oil had left the government with no other option.

"Whoever the president was, he or she would have had to raise fuel prices. It takes the courage of a leader," he said.

The nine-month election campaign period for the April 2009 legislative elections will begin July 8. The KPU is expected to issue the regulation next month.

"We are still gathering input from many parties to complete the draft regulation. We hope to issue it by mid-June," KPU member Andi Nurpati said.

Political scientists said the draft should regulate the "official leave" of legislators and other state officials during the campaign period to ensure public services are maintained.

"The rule is important because incumbent officials will no longer focus on their state duties if they are campaigning for their political parties," Kacung Marijan from Airlangga University told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

"There is a high risk of officials misusing state facilities and/or their positions for the benefit of their parties during the long campaign period."

He said any officials, including the President and Vice President, could easily use official visits to campaign for their parties if there was no clear rule.

The 2008 election law allows political parties to campaign for nine months and 21 days starting July 8, or three days after the KPU names the parties eligible to run in the election.

The national election body is currently verifying documents from 64 new parties to determine their eligibility.

Kacung said the KPU also needed to regulate the maximum amount of money used for the political campaign.

"All parties will fight to raise more funds. The major and older parties will benefit most because of their better links to power," he said.

"If this matter is not regulated, it will send negative signals that democracy is expensive and creates 'cartel' parties."

The Indonesian Broadcasting Commission has said the parties and presidential candidates spent most of their campaign funds for the 2004 elections on advertising, mainly on television.

The incumbent President and Vice President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Jusuf Kalla, spent 84 percent of their Rp 24 billion campaign budget on media advertising, the commission said.

Former president Megawati Soekarnoputri allocated 72 percent of her Rp 27 billion campaign budget to media advertising in the 2004 election, while another candidate, Wiranto, used 51 percent of his Rp 35 billion budget on similar activities.

Utama Sandjaja, chief of Cluster Democratic Governance at Partnership for Governance Reform, expressed concern the political parties lacked the will to educate the public during the campaign.

"They spend a lot of money on ads just to improve their image. It does not educate people on how to be more rational in the elections," he said.

Andi Nurpati said the election rule would also regulate the installation of street banners during the campaign period.

"The law currently only says campaign banners are prohibited in public places but we will go further to add details such as where banners can be placed," she said.

"But we won't regulate the size of street banners."

More countries have pledged financial assistance to Indonesia to help fight impacts of climate change, citing the Southeast Asian country's vulnerability to global warming.

Nikkei economic daily reported that Japan was to extend 20-30 billion yen worth of low-interest loans to Indonesia over the next five years.

"The money will go to environmental protection, including our combat against climate change. We still are discussing it with the Japanese government," State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Rachmat is to visit Japan next week to attend a conference on the future environment of Asia. Environment ministers from Japan and South Korea are scheduled to speak at the discussion.

"I will meet with Japanese officials to follow up the promise on the sidelines of the conference," Rachmat said.

Japan said it planned to provide up to 500 billion yen (US$4.8 billion) worth of loans to help developing countries fight global warming, AFP reported.

The first batch of new loans would go to Indonesia. Nigeria and Guyana are also candidates for aid.

The new yen loans would carry annual interest rates of 0.4 to 0.5 percent, far lower than the already low interest rates of some 1.0 to 1.2 percent now charged on 40-year loans provided by Japan.

The loans would be used to finance alternative energy projects such as wind and solar power generation, the installation of energy-saving equipment at power plants and forestation projects.

Many developed countries have offered Indonesia assistance to adapt to and mitigate climate change since the UN climate change conference in Bali last December.

Australia offered $30 million in grants to Indonesia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation in Kalimantan.

The United States announced a $2.8 million grant to support Indonesia to protect biodiversity and combat climate change.