Official caught piercing ballots

Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang

A joke is a very serious thing, says English poet Charles Churchill in his work The Ghost, a truism that has been learned the hard way by Syarifudin, a local election administrator in Jatiuwung subdistrict, Tangerang.

His joke was to order holes to be punched in the picture on the ballot papers of one of the 47 candidates standing in Banten for the Regional Representatives Council (DPD) before Monday's legislative election. However, his supposed jest was taken seriously by Muhamad Nuh, whose job it is to sort the ballot papers. In fact, the joke resulted in a total of 65 ballot papers being declared invalid.

The two were questioned by the Tangerang General Elections Committee over the weekend. Committee member Ibnu Jandi said that the poll organizer had yet to decide on whether the two should be punished.

"We seized all the invalid ballot papers. We will decide on whether to punish them after we talk to all the relevant parties," he said.

DPD candidate Arwan Simanjuntak, whose picture was perforated by Nuh, was not present during the questioning.

The invalid ballot papers were discovered by another sorting officer, Hendra, last Thursday. He later reported what he had found to elections administrator Dede Suhendar, who passed on the information to the subdistrict chief, Zaenudin.

All subdistrict officers and electoral administrators were gathered together on Friday by Zaenudin. During the meeting, Nuh admitted that he had punched a hole in Arwan's picture in the ballot papers. He claimed he was ordered to do so by Syarifudin.

Zaenudin met with Syarifudin separately on Saturday and the latter claimed tearfully that he had only been joking when he told Nuh to perforate the ballot papers.

"It was a joke. I swear to God I didn't mean to order him to punch holes in the ballot papers," he said.

According to Syarifudin, the idea had occurred to him as Nuh was a great supporter of Arwan and had been busy putting up Arwan posters on the streets.

However, he denied allegations that he had been asked by Arwan to order the latter's picture to be perforated on the ballot papers. "He never asked me to do that. I didn't get any money from him either."

Syarifudin is Arwan's secretary in the Tangerang branch of the Small and Medium Enterprises Communications Forum (FKPKMI).

Article 140 of the Election Law only provides that a person who deliberately causes another to lose votes or adds to/reduces the votes of an election candidate can be sentenced to a maximum of one year's imprisonment or fined up to Rp 10 million (US$1,162.8).

After realizing how serious the matter was, Syarifudin had only this to say: "I will leave it up to God as to what punishment they will impose on me. I just hope, however, that people believe that I only meant it as a joke."