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Acourt decision that served as an armistice between the nation’s two top election bodies has cleared the way for official monitors in May’s regional polls to officially take their posts.

The Elections Supervisory Board (Bawaslu) has selected members of regional poll monitoring bodies, known as Panwas, who are set to be inaugurated today.

“On Monday, we are going to inaugurate members of the Panwas from 20 regions,” Agustiani Tio Fridelina Sitorus, a Bawaslu member, told the Jakarta Globe.

The inaugurations will cap off a longstanding feud between Bawaslu and the General Elections Commission (KPU) over who would appoint supervisors for regional polls.

The Constitutional Court last week ended the spat when it granted Bawaslu the power to choose the Panwas monitors. It also denied Bawaslu’s request to block the KPU from appointing disciplinary councils.

A 2007 law had allowed the KPU to select the poll monitors for each of the 244 regional elections, which amounts to a total of 732 Panwas members.

But during a recent court session, legal experts said the KPU’s authority would threaten the independence and fairness of the upcoming elections because Panwas members would be supervising the work of the very body that had appointed them.

The power struggle between the KPU and Bawaslu resulted in the two bodies setting up competing Panwas agencies in some regions.

Vice President Boediono and Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi had tried to mediate the dispute, but to no avail. Discussions in the cabinet also failed to bring a settlement.

The Constitutional Court, however, denied Bawaslu’s request to revise an article in a law surrounding the formation of honorary councils, which have the power to discipline the KPU.

Bawaslu wanted the composition of the councils to be changed, arguing that three of the five members of each council were from the KPU, and were therefore biased. But the court decided the article did conflict with the Constitution.