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happy with not having their subordinates intheir office for two months time. Who is going to
do their work?

Countrywide, altogether, 4,000 people are requred for making the constituency-
level operational. It does not end there since, as has been mentioned above, there need to be

polling station committees, vote counting committees, investigation committees, etc. It is
estimated that the organization of MP-elections will require the help of around 1 million
people. Besides a small fraction of permanent positions, such as the PECs and their offices, all
the remaining positions, must be filled by volunteers who will have to be trained and super-
vised. In other words, any success in administering elections does not only depend on what the
national-level five commissioners and their staff do. On the contrary, to a large degree. success
depends on people who, at lower levels, sacrifice their time and energy to work for the ECT.

As it is already very difficult for the ECT to control what happens at the provincial level, it is
hardly possible to keep an eye on everything taking place at the constituency level and at the
polling and vote-counting stations. Until recently-to use Samut Prakan as an illustration-one
could put the blame on inefficient civil servants working in municipalities or for the Ministry
of the Interior. In the next elections, however, it will be the ECT that will be blamed for
anything nasty that may happen during electioneering, polling, and vote counting. One can
only hope that they will be well-prepared, both regarding administering the elections and
concerning taking the blame.

Finally, the constitution, in section 145 III, empowers the Election Commission to
entrust private organizations' representatives with the performance of duties. Section 327
stipulates which areas, at least. shall be covered by the organic law concerning the ECT.
Number seven provides for the acknowledgement and appointment of private organizations'
representatives to help with supervising elections. These two constitutional provisions led to
articles 10 (9) and 20 in the ECT law. The first concerns the ECT's support for private

organizations to conduct activities of political education for the people. The second regulates
the application process should an NGO have the intention to take part in the supervision of
elections. This latter aspect was further regulated by a specification on the directions for
assisting with supervising elections by private organizations as well as a regulation concerning
the performance of private organizations in helping with supervising elections. Both were
published in the Government Gazette on 30 March 1999. This supervisory function of NGOs
to contribute to ensuring free, clean, and fair elections was the rationale in setting up the
PollWatch organization in 1992, as previously mentioned. It has not become superfluous

merely because administering elections was assigned to a newly established organization, the
ECT. Not only is the ECT unable to control everything that happens in the complex process
of eclectioneering and voting, they also need to be observed by the interested public, via
NGOs, as to whether the ECT and its provincial branches perform their duties in a neutral,
effective, and efficient way. Therefore, when the Poll Watch Foundation, the successor of the