Commission members reveal huge flaws in election bill
Moch. N. Kurniawan and Yogita Tahilramani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Though hailed as democratic, Indonesia's 1999 elections could hardly be called credible with a dismal record of 2,400 election campaign violations, including bribery, vote-rigging and extortion among its other vices.
Can the current election bill be counted upon to guarantee a democratic election in the 2004 polls?
According to members of the General Elections Commission (KPU), an independent body entrusted with the task of organizing the polls, it is highly unlikely that the 2004 polls will be administered credibly, if serious flaws in certain articles of the election bill are not corrected.
Prof. Ramlan Surbakti of Surabaya-based Airlangga University said on Wednesday that among its major flaws, the bill limited the powers of KPU to effectively deal with violations committed during elections and election campaign.
Article 125 of the election bill states that KPU monitors the elections, records election violations, investigates them, prepares dossiers of investigations and hands over the dossiers to either the police or local prosecutors.
"The cases will be then handled by the Indonesian courts. Out of the 2,400 violations recorded in the 1999 polls, only four were settled by our courts. They are just too burdened with day- to-day criminal cases," Ramlan, who is a KPU member, told The Jakarta Post.
He suggested that ad-hoc tribunals instead be established by local courts, for the purpose of handling violations committed before and during the elections.
"We hope the Article is revised, so that KPU is authorized to supervise the prosecution or police investigations into the criminal violation cases, which should then be tried by ad-hoc tribunals," Ramlan said, adding that ad-hoc tribunals were required by law to issue a ruling on cases within a set period of time, like within 30 days.
Ramlan said that KPU should control investigations in "noncriminal" cases also such as incidents of public officials campaigning during elections or the use of public facilities by political parties for election work.
"A paragraph in the Article should stipulate that aside from investigating noncriminal cases, to save time, KPU should be empowered to enforce sanctions against the guilty party. Sanctions must already be regulated in the Election Law," Ramlan said.
Another KPU member Chusnul Mar'iyah also slammed the government for literally robbing KPU of its independence, by placing the KPU secretary-general and vice secretary-general under the Ministry of Home Affairs in the KPU organizational structure.
This is stipulated in Article 67 of the election bill.
Chusnul said that the secretary-general administered the polls.
"It is the staff of the secretary-general that holds the election results. They are the ones registering the voters, and counting the votes, and not the total 11 members of KPU," she said.
"There will always be fear that the Ministry of Home Affairs could order the secretary-general to favor a particular political party, and we wouldn't even know about it."
The secretary-general and vice secretary-general are appointed and dismissed by the President upon the recommendation of the minister of home affairs, according to Paragraph 4 of Article 67 in the bill. "The secretary-general's promotions, salary and transfer of duty is arranged and executed by the Ministry of Home Affairs. If the body that administers the polls is not independent, how can the poll results be trusted by the public?" she said.
Chusnul said that another "ludicrous" issue was that KPU funds would be regulated by the secretary-general, as stipulated in Article 74 of the bill, but KPU members would be held accountable for the funds.
"How can we, the 11 members of KPU, be held accountable for something like the corruption of election funds allocated for political party' flags for instance, in the 1999 polls, when we were never in charge of the funds?"