Official caught piercing ballots

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."