Commission members reveal huge flaws in election bill
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?"