Despite a moratorium on campaign ads, Election Supervisory Committee (Bawaslu) commissioner Nelson Simanjuntak admitted that his committee was powerless to halt the slew of campaign ads appearing in both electronic and print media due to the absence of a clear-cut legal regulation restricting them.
“The moratorium should have been adhered to by the parties in line with their moral basis,” he said on Monday as quoted by tempo.co.
Nelson said reports of violations would always be bogged down in the police over arguments regarding whether ads actually constituted a violation.
Meanwhile, member of the General Elections Commission (KPU) Ferry Kurnia Rizkiyansyah deplored parties' breaking of the rules and underlined that the campaign ads regulation was crystal clear.
“Political and campaign ads can only be run between March 16 and April 5,” he said.
Previously, general election bodies and media monitoring agencies have agreed to forbid political parties from running political ads through electronic and print media in the run-up to the legislative election’s campaign period, which is scheduled to kick off on March 16.
A joint task force, comprising Bawaslu, the KPU, the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) and the Central Information Commission (KIP), said that the decision had been made following a request by the House of Representatives Commission I overseeing information.
Source/Fuente: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/03/11/bawaslu-powerless-stop-cam...
