Jeffrey A. Winters, Evanston, Illinois – What began as a localized case of electoral fraud in East Java's gubernatorial elections has now exploded into a scandal potentially reaching to the highest levels in Jakarta. Even more worrying, as Indonesia approaches the April 9 parliamentary elections, the voting list crimes alleged in East Java could exist in other provinces across the nation.

On February 18, East Java police chief Herman Sumawiredja announced that his investigators had found credible evidence of criminal fraud in the elections. This officially upgraded the case from a preliminary investigation to a criminal case, meaning police could now compel individuals and institutions to comply with their investigation. They could seize files and computers and detain suspects. The police also named the head of the regional election commission, Wahyudi Purnomo, as a criminal suspect.

The next morning, chief Sumawiredja was suddenly removed from his post by police headquarters in Jakarta. Even more strange, later that afternoon the head of police intelligence from Jakarta flew to Surabaya to meet with the investigative team. In a closed session at the Shangrila Hotel that began after dinner and lasted until 4 am, the top cop from Jakarta pressured the investigators to downgrade the case from a criminal to a preliminary investigation.

The East Java police investigators, who were convinced their work was solid, resisted the pressure, knowing that downgrading the case was the same as killing the investigation. Under enormous pressure, they capitulated in the wee hours of the morning. The investigation was halted. The provincial police chief was gone. And Purnomo was no longer a criminal suspect.

But the story did not end there. To the chagrin of the actors in Jakarta seeking to stop the process, police chief Sumawiredja refused to remain silent or be intimidated.

He had been scheduled to retire as of 1 June 2009, but instead demanded the date be moved forward to 1 March. He reasoned that he would have no new position or office for three months, so why not just retire immediately?

Sumawiredja's request alarmed the higher-ups at police headquarters (and to this day they have not issued the paperwork acknowledging the 1 March date). But as Sumawiredja said to the local press, "If we are talking about extending my retirement date beyond 1 June, that's up to police headquarters. But if we are talking about me moving my retirement forward a few months, that's my decision."

Sumawiredja stated at the same press conference that although he had no problem with being rotated out of his post prematurely, he was fully aware why the action was being taken. It was political, in his view, and directly related to the investigation into the case of criminal electoral fraud. He did not want to be silenced by the same officials that removed him.

Police chief Sumawiredja's revealing public statements since being removed raise three pressing questions.

First, was the election of East Java's governor legitimate? Despite allegations by the defeated candidate, the Constitutional Court decided on February 4th that it was. It will be up to the Court to review that finding in light of chief Sumawiredja's announcement on Feb.18 that there was strong evidence of criminal fraud in the election.

Second, why did officials from Jakarta intervene in such a heavy-handed manner to halt the criminal investigation in East Java? If there was ever a case that could improve public perceptions about the quality of the nation's police, this would be it. But instead of praising the East Java investigators for the high quality of their work, the top brass in Jakarta scolded them, pressured them to stop, and removed their boss.

The police officers who knew the details of the case best were in East Java, and they came to the unanimous conclusion that there was evidence of massive fraud in the voting lists (DPT) used in the election. In the two regencies they investigated in depth, they found 345,000 fictive names on a digital version of the official roster of 1.2 million voters. That's over 27 percent.

When they tracked down several hundred hard copies of the voter lists and compared them with the digital data they had, they could confirm 29,000 fictive names. The sample they had of the hard copies strongly supported the view that the 345,000 figure was accurate.

And yet higher officials from Jakarta, who knew far less about the case than the direct investigators, flew to Surabaya to insist that the investigators were wrong and should stop.

The obvious question is: On whose initiative did the head of police in Jakarta intervene in this case? Did he decide on his own to take this action (and why would he do that?), or was he instructed by higher officials in the Yudhoyono administration to stop the investigation? It happens that the candidate who won the governorship in East Java was backed by the president's party.

And finally, if voter registration lists were as criminally fraudulent and manipulated as chief Sumawiredja alleges, what confidence can Indonesians have that voter lists produced for branches of the same Electoral Commission across the archipelago are any less fraudulent? All voter lists were presumably produced in the same manner.

Heads of the parties competing for parliamentary seats on April 9 have begun expressing alarm about the implications of the East Java case for the broader democratic process. They have demanded that voter lists be cleaned up in the few days that remain before election day.

And if that is logistically impossible, then some have demanded that all voter lists (DPT) be placed online so that citizens, NGO's, the press, and analysts in the parties can examine them in detail. There may be no other way to restore confidence in the process.

Thus far, the responses from police headquarters and from top officials at the national elections commission (KPU) have been extremely weak. The police claim there was nothing irregular in removing chief Sumawiredja. They also criticized the upgrading of the case to the criminal level as "premature." But that was the only way to dig deeper for evidence of criminality from individuals and government agencies like the local electoral commission, who were doing all they could to block the investigators.

Since the case was downgraded, the investigation has effectively ended. The police could go no further without the power to compel compliance with their search for evidence.

Chief Sumawiredja had stated from the outset that if the initial evidence showing criminal fraud was not borne out by further investigation, he would be delighted to dismiss the case and apologize publicly to anyone drawn into the matter.

Meanwhile, top officials at the electoral commission have responded by trying to shift the blame to the political parties. Although it is the KPU's job to certify the final voter lists used at polling stations across the country, they blame the parties for not verifying the data in draft lists circulated during the fall of 2008.

The parties have neither the staff nor the budget to take on this task, nor do they have the computing capabilities the KPU has to examine voter lists for a country of nearly 250 million citizens.

It is unclear how this scandal will evolve. Will the chief of police take full blame for the intervention in East Java, cutting off questions about the role of officials above him? Will the elections be postponed until the voter lists are cleaned up, as some party heads have demanded?

And if the elections are held with questions in the air about the voter lists, and after the elections it is found they were riddled with fictive names on the same scale as seen in East Java, can the elections have any legitimacy?

For his part, former police chief Sumawiredja has worried out loud about the potential for violence and social disruptions if the people discover the April elections were marred by massive fraud.

[The writer is professor of political economy at Northwestern University, USA.]