Legalities leave fraud diploma cases unreported

Legalities leave fraud diploma cases unreported

Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Although the Jakarta General Elections Committee (KPUD) has
dropped 23 legislative candidates from the candidacy list for
submitting fake school diplomas, the Jakarta Elections
Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu Jakarta) has yet to file any
report with the police.

"We have not reported the fake document case to the police
because we see it as a criminal case," Panwaslu Jakarta chairman
Sarluhut Napitupulu told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

"We call on any institution to file reports (on fake documents
submission) because the case is not a violation of the General
Elections Law. It is not our task to report it."

Sarluhut argued that about half of the 23 legislative
candidates were currently serving as councillors in the city.
Therefore, he said, they had been using the same fake diplomas
since the previous election in 1999.

"That's why we consider it purely as a crime," he said.

KPUD had planned to file reports on the case to the police
since early this month after the documents in question were
confirmed as counterfeit by the Ministry of National Education.
However, KPUD has not decided on which regulation should been
used: the Criminal Code or the General Elections Law.

KPUD deputy chairman Hamdan Rasyid had said earlier that the
commission would prefer to charge the suspects under Article 263
of the Criminal Code on counterfeit documents, which carries a
maximum sentence of six years imprisonment.

"We prefer the Criminal Code because it carries a heavier
punishment than the Election Law's Article 137 that only carries
a maximum of three months in prison," he said.

Before the KPUD managed to file the report, the Institution of
Regional Administration Research and Development (LP3D) already
took the initiative to bring the case to the police.

Since LP3D used the General Elections Law in their report, the
police rejected it and said that violations of the law should
have been reported to Panwaslu.

So far, the Jakarta Police have handled only one case of a
fake diploma of a legislative candidate from the Indonesian
Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).

Sarluhut said that the case was reported not by Panwaslu but
by PDI-P itself.

Despite many violations of the Elections Law, only one case
has been brought to court.

The Central Jakarta District Court, which hosted the first
trial on general elections violations, only fined a businessman
and four employees for early campaigning on Tuesday. The fines
were Rp 200,000 for the businessman and Rp 100,000 each for the
employees.