Jakarta. Police have arrested dozens of people in East Nusa Tenggara for allegedly setting fire to a regional election office linked to a disputed district election involving former Constitutional Court chief justice Akil Mochtar.
“We have named 54 people suspects,” Southwest Sumba Police chief, Adj. Sr. Cmr. M. Ischaq said on Tuesday. ”They will be charged under Article 12 of the 1951 law on carrying sharp weapons and will also be charged with arson and vandalizing public facilities.”
Ischaq said all suspects had been detained and would be questioned later, and added that police were investigating the death of a man found one kilometer from the Southwest Sumba Election Commission (KPUD) office. It was not known on Tuesday whether the man’s death was related to the arson, but police said the man had died some five or six hours before he was found.
Police said the group of 54 descended on the office armed with machetes and Molotov cocktails on Friday, March 28, out of anger over a decision to uphold a ruling by the Constitutional Court declaring Markus Dairo Tallu and Ndara Tanggu Kaha the winners of two local elections despite evidence of vote-rigging.
The case dates back to the disputed election of Markus and Ndara, of the Golkar Party, to the district and sub-district heads of West Sumba on Aug. 10, 2013. Shortly after the election result was announced, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle’s (PDI-P) losing pair of Kornelis Kode Mete and Daud Ende Lende Umbu Motto presented all 144 ballot boxes to the Constitutional Court for review.
The Constitutional Court threw out Kornelis’ appeal on Aug. 29, confirming the election of Markus to the district head office.
Kornelis, however, made a police complaint at the same time as filing for review with the Constitutional Court. The police inquiry found evidence of vote-rigging — and the local election office announced on Sept. 26 following a recount that Kornelis and Daud had won 50.38 percent of the total vote against 42.78 percent for Markus and his running mate.
A period of uncertainty followed in the following months until March 22, when the provincial office of the Election Commission released a statement that the delayed inauguration of Markus and Nadra would proceed because the Constitutional Court’s ruling in Markus’ favor was final and binding.
The violence on March 28 was understood to have been related to that statement on March 22.
Indonesia’s heavily decentralized political framework makes provincial governorships and district-head positions valuable commodities because local governments have direct oversight of large budgets to manage everything from road repairs to school refurbishments. The arrest of the then-head of the Constitutional Court Akil Mochtar last year on allegations that he was effectively selling these positions to the highest bidder have brought several similar cases to light across Indonesia.
The most high-profile to date has been the detention of Banten Governor Ratu Atut Chosiyah. Atut has been detained on charges of charges of extortion and corruption and will face prosecutors’ allegations that she consolidated a system of industrial-scale corruption on the Javan province, allegedly marking up infrastructure and public-development contracts to companies controlled by her family.
Source/Fuente: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/police-arrest-54-arson-sumba-electio...
