Muninggar Sri Saraswati – The Indonesian police should be on alert for possible elections-related conflict in regions that have witnessed "particularly bitter" local election disputes or regions that have proposed new administration divisions, an analyst suggested on Wednesday.
The National Police headquarters recently dispatched more than 600 Mobile Brigade, or Brimob, officers to Papua, Maluku and Aceh provinces, all of which have experienced internal conflicts in the past.
The additional officers are stationed in the regions until Oct. 20, the scheduled inauguration day for the newly-elected president and vice president, as police predict possible tensions in those regions.
Sidney Jones, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group's Asia Program, said police should pay particular attention to East Java and North Maluku provinces, where there have been disputes in gubernatorial elections.
"These regions in particular deserve a lot of attention because of the possible leftover conflicts," she said on Wednesday, but added that any disputes there would be unlikely to spur widespread violence.
The East Java gubernatorial elections fell into dispute after candidate Khofifah Indar Parawansa lost to Sukarwo by a slim margin. After months of legal rows in the Constitutional Court, Sukarwo was named the East Java governor, to the dismay of Khofifah's supporters.
In North Maluku, the gubernatorial elections were marred with violence on the streets. It took more than a year before the elected winner of the elections was announced.
Apart from those two regions, Jones mentioned Tapanuli, a regency in North Sumatra which has demanded that it become its own province.
Tapanuli was thrust into the national spotlight recently when supporters of a new breakaway province mobbed North Sumatra council chairman and Golkar councillor Abdul Aziz Angkat during a violent protest. Abdul died shortly thereafter.
Jones said the region was worth monitoring, as the Tapanuli issue had religious overtones that could potentially lead to broader communal conflict.
Many people had assumed that Christian politicians were the driving force for the establishment of a Tapanuli province, Jones said. Radical groups such as Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia had then seized upon those religious tensions, she said.
Jones lamented the fact that this year's elections would likely have fewer monitors – both international and domestic. Monitors, she said, are crucial to maintaining public trust and granting legitimacy to the electoral process.
Some small parties have raised concerns over their inability to deploy their own monitors for the election-related activities, Jones said.
Disputes over such processes had incited the problems in East Java and North Maluku, she added. However, Jones believed that technical issues would not influence the result of the elections.