Market price must serve as benchmark for ballot printing:BPKP
Moch. N. Kurniawan and M. Taufiqurrahman Jakarta
An expert called on the General Elections Commission (KPU) Tuesday to use the market price as the benchmark for ballot printing costs amid growing indications that the previous printing price was too expensive.
"We realize that businesses should earn a profit in printing ballot papers, but they should not just take this chance to get an extraordinarily high profit," Supervision deputy chairman at the Development and Finance Control Agency (BPKP) Djoko Susilo said.
"The fairest price for both sides (KPU and businesses) is the market price," he explained to The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of a seminar on logistical preparations for the presidential election held by Indonesian Procurement Watch (IPW).
Djoko chaired the team that formulated presidential decrees No. 16/1994 and No. 18/2000 on goods procurement.
The KPU is now preparing to print ballot papers for the July 5 presidential election.
Around 160 million ballot papers will be printed for the election.
With six presidential and vice presidential candidate pairs registered with the KPU, it is likely that the ballot paper will be 28 centimeters by 41 centimeters.
Meanwhile, one printing firm, Stacopa Raya, said it could print 28 cm by 41 cm full color papers at the price of Rp 40 per page.
"This price does not include the negative template and the blank sheet of paper, which you (KPU) must provide to us," Mahmud H.S. of Stacopa Raya said.
Stacopa is one of the printing firms that won the printing order from the KPU to print ballot counting forms for the April 5 legislative election.
Separately, Vivi, an official from Winkarya Lintas Persada, which was among the winners of the last election's ballot paper tender, said her firm could give customers a price of Rp 75 to print paper with the size of 34 cm by 50 cm in full color.
"We can't go lower than that price," she said.
In the legislative election, the KPU decided to print ballot papers of various sizes with an average price set at Rp 275 per page.
The ballot paper size for the legislative election included 48 cm by 80.5 cm, 55 cm by 80.5 cm and 58 cm by 80.5 cm.
However, experts have repeatedly criticized the KPU for determining the price to print ballot paper in the last election, saying that the price should be around Rp 100 per page.
Separately, the KPU had decided to maintain the use of computerized tabulations in the ballot counting for the presidential election, despite the public criticism of it in April.
KPU chairman Nazaruddin Syamsudin, however, said that the computerized tabulation would be used only as a support method for the manual count.
"Data from the computerized tabulation will be used only for comparison purposes, aside from records from the polling stations," Nazaruddin said in a press briefing here.
He claimed that the extended use of the computerized tabulation was decided by the KPU only after taking the public demand into account.
"The public really appreciated the use of the computerized tabulation in the legislative elections, especially in the first days of counting. It could only be done with the help of information technology (IT)," he said.