Poll observers and politicians have slammed election organizers for sticking with the current voter roll for the 2014 elections, warning of flawed data that could pad the list by more than 10 million fictional voters.
Ray Rangkuti, director of the Indonesian Civil Circle (Lima), an election watchdog, accused the General Elections Commission (KPU) on Tuesday of being “too forceful” in insisting on Monday that it would stick with its much-criticized list of 186.6 million registered voters.
He said the KPU had unilaterally decided to raise the total from the initial figure of 176.2 million based on the claim that the extra 10.4 million were people who were eligible to vote but who lacked government identification numbers because they were not resident in their hometowns, were in jail, or disenfranchised by a combination of other factors.
“This is what the KPU is claiming, but is this the truth? If so, why didn’t these problems surface earlier? Why weren’t these people without government ID numbers registered for one before the October 23 deadline?” Ray said.
“There’s a lot of mystery behind this.”
He also noted that the Elections Supervisory Body (Bawaslu), the government’s polling monitor, had also raised questions about the additional voters.
He urged the House of Representatives’ Commission II, which oversees domestic affairs, to set up a special committee to look into the matter.
The KPU insisted on Monday that it would retain the 10.4 million names in the electoral roll for next year’s legislative and presidential polls.
“We want to protect the constitutional rights of the citizens who are eligible voters,” KPU commissioner Sigit Pamungkas said as quoted by Antara, the state-run news agency.
“Even though they don’t fulfill the requirement [of having a government identification number], it’s better rather than depriving them of their voting rights just for an administrative reason.”
Election law stipulates that only those with valid identification numbers can vote. Sigit said he would work closely with the Home Affairs Ministry to ensure that everyone on the list received a number before the election.
However, politicians have lashed out at the KPU for its decision, with Arif Wibowo, a legislator from the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) calling it “premature and illegal.”
“Announcing the final list as it stands violates the law,” he said, adding he was unconvinced that the government would be able to distribute more than 10 million identification numbers in time for the legislative election next April.
Habiburokhman, a senior adviser for the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), also said his party rejected the list in its current form.
“The problem is the inclusion of these 10 million voters without identification numbers. The 2012 General Elections Law clearly states that a valid identification number is a prerequisite for being registered as a voter,” he said.
“Without this number, we won’t know for sure who this individual is, and for all we know it could be a fictional voter.”
He also said that Gerindra monitors scouring voter rolls at the regional level had found several cases of voters being registered to vote at multiple polling stations.
“But in order to properly identify all the cases of multiple registration, we would need to comprehensively study the national voter roll that we only received on October 29,” Habiburokhman said.
“So it’s virtually impossible for us to comb through all the entries in time to sign off on the list this week.”
He added there was no need for the KPU to finalize the list at this point, noting that for the 2004 election, which was also held in April, the KPU had finalized the list in February of that year, or just two months prior to the polls.
In the last set of general elections, in 2009, the commission was widely criticized for listing many people multiple times while leaving off thousands of eligible voters, prompting the Supreme Court to rule that all voters should be allowed to cast a ballot just by showing an ID card.
Habiburokhman said the KPU should have learned its lessons from the 2009 presidential election, whose outcome he said was still “viewed by many people as not being legitimate.”
“The KPU should also have considered that the number of parties eligible to compete in 2014 is much lower than in 2009, so the competition will be much tighter. That’s why it should be doing everything it can to minimize the possibility of poll fraud and other problems,” he said.
Tjahjo Kumolo, the secretary general of the PDI-P, agreed that there was no need to rush the announcement to finalize the voter roll.
“We’re actually on the KPU’s side in terms of wanting to see a free and fair election next year,” he said.
“We’re repeatedly written to the KPU to share its voter data with us so we can look into the problem voters, but there’s never been a positive response from the KPU.
“For the sake of the KPU’s own reputation, I believe the voter list should continue to be improved,” Tjahjo added.
Others, however, say the KPU should not take the full blame for the problems with the list.
Jeirry Sumampouw, the national coordinator for the Indonesian Voter Committee (Tepi), said the list was based on the Home Ministry’s potential voter database, or DP4, and that it was the latter that was fundamentally flawed to begin with.
“The Home Ministry is playing it off as though the DP4 is fine. The problem is that there are a lot of quality and accuracy issues with it,” he said.
The DP4 is itself based largely on the voter roll for the 2009 elections, which was widely criticized for its multiple-registered voters and omission of valid voters.
But not everyone was critical of the KPU’s voter list. Didik Supriyanto, the chairman of the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem), a poll watchdog, said the list this time around was vastly improved from 2009, adding the KPU should be lauded for taking its job much more seriously than before.
“What’s different this time from 2009 is that the KPU has realized all year long that there the list is flawed, and has been working to fix the problems, whereas last time it didn’t take the matter quite so seriously,” he said.
However, he advised that the commission continue to fix the list and not stick with the current version
Author/Autor:Anastasia Winanti Riesardhy & Markus Junianto
Source/Fuente:http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/final-voter-roll-stirs-up-storm-of-c...
