KPU's authority

I thank Thomas Hidya Tjaya for his article Finding the best way to choose our leaders (The Jakarta Post, May 19).

He comments that "we express the freedom to choose our leaders through state institutions, including the General Elections Commission (KPU)".

It would be more accurate to say that the KPU has legal authority to manage the elections, enabling it to uphold or to restrict freedom. When the home ministry had this authority it restricted freedom by, for example, allowing only three parties, and the current KPU is following a similar path by allowing only five presidential candidates and excluding one, who also happens to have the longest record of defending democracy and human rights.

According to Thomas, the majority of people accept without question the right of the KPU to throw out Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid. On the other hand, if the KPU issued a decree barring women candidates then more people might object because Megawati has more supporters than Gus Dur and discrimination against women is a hotter issue than discrimination against the blind. In any case, counting the number of people who accept the KPU's decision without question only shows how many people will acquiesce to the erosion of their own freedoms. It does not make the KPU's decision less repressive.

Nor is it acceptable to suppress the rights of the blind merely because "for many people, the requirements for physical and mental health appear commonsensical".

Guessing how many people are prejudiced against blind people is a job for survey institutes, not the KPU.

JOHN HARGREAVES Jakarta