Papua poll officials charged with fraud
Papua poll officials charged with fraud
Nethy Dharma Somba, Jayapura
Repeating an old trick of their New Order counterparts, two
subdistrict poll officials in Timika, Papua province, allegedly
pierced thousands of ballot papers to benefit Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono and Jusuf Kalla.
The act was discovered by the local authorities on Monday and
the two were immediately arrested for police questioning.
A senior police officer said on Wednesday that after
questioning, police investigators had named as suspects two poll
officials, Edward Wenda and Pasmin Weya, for unlawfully
perforating 3,200 ballot papers allocated to four polling
stations in Kwamki Lama hamlet, Timika. The town is located some
750 kilometers southeast of Jayapura, the capital of Papua.
The act had allowed Susilo and Kalla to "win" by a landslide
at polling stations 11, 12, 13 and 14 in Kwamki Lama, according
to Mimika Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Paulus Waterpauw who
oversees Timika municipality.
The two suspects confessed that they committed the wrongdoing
after they had been offered a substantial sum of money by
the Susilo-Kalla campaign team in Timika, said Paulus, without
disclosing the total amount involved. "We are still looking into
the matter -- whether they were really offered the money," said
Paulus.
He said that the two were charged with depriving the public of
the right to vote, thus violating Law No. 12/2003 on elections,
which carries a maximum sentence of six months' imprisonment.
The fraud was spotted on Monday when the two poll officials
handed over boxes containing ballot papers to the head of New
Mimika district poll committee, Marthen Sawai.
Marthen was puzzled at receiving the ballot boxes, as the two
handed them over to him at around 9:30 on Monday morning, when
other polling stations had only just opened for voting. He
immediately reported the alleged fraud to officials at Timika
Election Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu), who then informed the
local police.
Such electoral fraud is not new; it was often perpetrated by
poll officials during the tenure of the New Order government, to
favor the ruling Golkar Party. The misdeeds were never publicized
at that time as the country was under the tight grip of then
president Soeharto.