Camelia Pasandaran & Nivell Rayda – Civil society organizations on Friday called for the Corruption Eradication Commission to investigate election commission higher-ups over procurements for the legislative polls.
The organizations, under the umbrella of the Independent Monitoring Organization, said it was not right that the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) should investigate only employees from the General Elections Commission (KPU) while ignoring the commissioners themselves.
The organization added that the KPK's probe should not just concentrate on electronic vote tabulation procurements.
"The procurement process also involved KPU commissioners," Arif Nur Alam, director of Indonesia Budget Center, said on Friday. "And these commissioners should also be responsible for the procurement as it was under their supervision."
The Corruption Eradication Commission on Thursday summoned three officials from the KPU over technical problems in the electronic vote-counting system used in the April 9 legislative polls.
The system – which the KPU says cost Rp 40 billion ($3.8 million), in contrast to assertions by the KPK that it cost Rp 103 billion – was designed to provide unofficial results ahead of the finalization of the official manual vote count on May 9.
The KPU had planned to use the system to count 80 percent of the ballots by April 20, but it had barely counted 10 percent of the about 130 million eligible votes by this deadline, prompting an investigation by the KPK.
The day after the deadline, the KPK opened a corruption probe into the use of the system to determine whether the process to procure the technology had been carried out in an honest, transparent manner.
Arif also said the KPK should investigate other procurments by the elections commission, including ballot papers.
"There were many misprinted ballot papers that could not be used, as well as cases of switched ballot papers, which meant the KPU had to reprint the papers," he said.
"The KPK should investigate whether there were irregularities in the ballot paper procurement."
Roy Salam, a researcher at the Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency, said the KPK should also investigate the inefficient budget usage for voter education programs. "There were several areas in which KPU spending appears excessive," Roy said.
Sulastio, chairman of the Indonesian Parliamentary Center, said the KPK should speed up its investigation to prevent any attempts to destroy evidence. "The KPK should move quickly to investigate these issues as there may be efforts to hide or change the data," he said.
KPK spokesman Johan Budi said that "at the moment there are no plans to summon any of the [KPU] commissioners, but if there is a need to do so, we will."