Camelia Pasandaran – The National Commission on Human Rights said on Tuesday that the General Elections Commission had violated human rights by denying "millions of unregistered eligible voters" their right to participate in the presidential poll.
The commission, also known as Komnas HAM, has been critical of the embattled elections body, or KPU, and earlier blasted it for problems with voters rolls used for legislative elections in April.
"The KPU is the institution that has the authority to register all eligible voters," said Nur Kholis, a member of Komnas HAM. "But it neglected its work and as a result many people were unable to cast their vote."
Syafruddin Ngulma Simeulue, another Komnas HAM member, said the KPU had failed to fix problems with the voters list in time for the presidential election, despite widespread calls to do so.
"We're now compiling the data for a report on this case that will be published next week," Syafruddin said, adding that a number of prisoners in Kalimantan had been unable to vote.
"Most of the prisoners have no identity card, and the commission did not allow them to vote. The head of the prison has asked the KPU to allow the prisoners to use other identification methods, but the idea was refused," he said.
"The Constitutional Court should have issued a different ruling on this," Syafruddin said. "The court should allow the use of legitimate identification documents. Its decision to allow unregistered voters to vote using identity cards did not really work, as not many people took advantage."
Yoseph Adi, also a Komnas HAM member, said many hospital patients had not been able to vote because the KPU failed to provide polling stations.
"The KPU should be able to honor the principles of human rights, such as to understand, to respect and to protect the rights of eligible voters," Yoseph said.
"There were systemic violations by design," he said. "In the legislative elections, we already criticized them, but they ignored it. They did not fix problems for the presidential election."