KPU urges media to be professional
KPU urges media to be professional
Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The General Elections Commission (KPU), the Election Supervisory
Committee and the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) are
drafting election campaign guidelines to govern coverage on radio
and television, which will set limitations on the length of the
advertising slots allocated to candidates.
KPU member Hamid Awaluddin said on Tuesday that the guidelines
would not allow party or Regional Representatives Council (DPD)
candidates to book more than 10 slots of 30 seconds duration
during each day of the campaign. This was in line with KPU
Instruction No. 701/2004 on the election campaign, he said.
Election candidates would also be banned from buying slots. If
this was not the case, it was feared that the big parties with
huge financial resources would gain an unfair advantage.
"These guidelines will provide the Election Supervisory
Committee with yardsticks for conducting monitoring during the
campaign," Hamid told a press conference after a meeting of
members of KPU, the supervisory committee, the KPI and
representatives of non-governmental organizations.
The discussions on the drafting of the guidelines would start
on Thursday.
The KPU instruction stipulates that parties and DPD candidates
will only be allocated a maximum of 10 spots on radio with a
duration of 60 seconds per spot, and are prohibited from using
slots allotted to other candidates for whatever reason.
Hamid said the guidelines would also require all TV and radio
stations to announce publicly their advertising rates for the
election campaign and the payment procedures.
Meanwhile, KPI chairman Victor Menayang said the planned
guidelines would protect radio and television stations from
pressure from the political parties, provide parties with equal
opportunities to air advertisements, and ensure that the public
received high quality information.
He said that those broadcasters who violated the guidelines
would be punished.
"The violators will receive punishments ranging from
reprimands to being ordered to stop airing news as provided for
in the Broadcasting Law," he said.
Supervisory committee chairman Komaruddin Hidayat had
something else to say, however.
"There will be no punishments. These guidelines are not
regulations but rather suggestions," he said.
The KPU instruction on the election campaign says nothing
about sanctions.
Victor also said it would be difficult to regulate the
editorial policy of media outlets in covering the election as
this would greatly depend on the outlets themselves.
"We have to admit that for some media outlets certain parties
are newsmakers while others are not," he said.
A senior executive of the Media Election Coalition, Indra J.
Piliang, hailed the plan to draft campaign guidelines for the
media, saying it would make it easier for his organization to
monitor the campaign, particularly in the electronic media.