Police told to protect election whistle blowers
Police told to protect election whistle blowers
Moch. N. Kurniawan
The Jakarta Post
Jakarta
The people are likely to be reluctant to report violations of
next year's electoral processes, unless authorities, especially
the police, provide them with physical protection.
The Independent Election Monitoring Committee (KIPP), the
Rectors' Forum and the Supervisory Elections Committee (Panwaslu)
agreed over the weekend that a witness protection law was needed.
"We expect the police to protect witnesses who are willing to
disclose violations of the electoral processes.
"But we cannot expect much from this "protection" as the
country still lacks police numbers and we still do not have a law
on witnesses protection," KIPP coordinator Ray Rangkuti said over
the weekend.
Indonesia is scheduled to hold legislative elections in April
2004, and two-phased direct presidential elections in July and
September respectively.
The National Elections Commission (KPU) complained earlier
that no one came forward to report alleged document forgeries by
individuals aspiring for seats in the Regional Representative
Council (DPD).
Ray said KIPP planned to establish crisis centers in every
province to protect and conceal the identities of those who came
forward to report such violations.
According to him, for their own security people are not
expected to disclose their identities when filing a report to
KIPP at crisis centers.
He said KIPP volunteers would then investigate the report.
Should the case be brought to court they will also testify at the
court along with Panwaslu.
"It is part of our efforts to optimize our monitoring role of
the elections," he said.
Ray predicted that violations would be rampant during both
legislative and presidential elections and during the ballot
counting.
Separately, another election monitoring organization, the
Rectors' Forum, said that it would follow the existing rulings to
protect witnesses willing to report election violations.
"If the law requires us to conceal the identity of witnesses,
we will do it. We will do our jobs properly," said Sudjana Sapi'e
of the Rectors' Forum.
Meanwhile, Panwaslu said it had found difficulties in finding
witnesses with the courage to testify before the committee over
violations of the recent Regional Representatives Council (DPD)
registration.
The committee's vice chairman, Saut H. Sirait, said most
witnesses were unwilling to disclose such violations out of fear
for their own safety.
Saut admitted that, although the committee was seeking to
collaborate with a number of monitoring organizations to help
protect witnesses, such collaborations were unlikely to eventuate
due to a lack of funds.
"Actually, we have planned to encourage monitoring
organizations, rather than individuals, to report such violations
to the committee," he said.
Based on this approach, witnesses would anonymously submit
reports to monitoring organizations. The latter would then
forward these to the committee and testify before the court if
necessary, he said.
"However, some monitoring organizations have told me that they
lacked the funds to do so," he said.