Camelia Pasandaran – The voters list fiasco of this year's legislative and presidential elections was not solely the fault of the General Elections Commission, the Elections Supervisory Board said on Wednesday.
Bambang Eka Cahya Widodo, a member of the board, also known as Bawaslu, was speaking before a meeting with a House of Representatives committee investigating allegations that voters' rights were violated by election errors.
He argued that the problems with the list were the collective result of errors made by the government, lawmakers, the commission and voters themselves.
"There was a large contribution from lawmakers, who produced an unclear law; the government, which provided inaccurate raw data on citizens; the elections commission, which could not manage the data; and voters, who lacked the initiative to check whether they had been registered," Bambang said.
He urged legislators to do their part to improve the situation. "Before the regional elections next year, the Election Law should be revised," he said.
The elections commission, known as the KPU, has been attacked relentlessly over the past few months for producing flawed voter lists in both the April 9 legislative and July 8 presidential electio ns.
It issued three so-called final voters lists for the legislative balloting and another three during the run-up to the presidential election.
The House committee had summoned the KPU, Bawaslu and the Home Affairs Ministry to a closed-door meeting on Wednesday, demanding an explanation. The committee has also been investigating allegations of unregistered voters, underage voters and flawed citizen data in at least 15 cities.
KPU member Andi Nurpati defended the commission, saying it was hampered by time constraints. She said the commission had only three months to upgrade the inaccurate raw data it received from the government.
"The data from the government was incomplete," she said. "For some districts, the [government-provided] compact discs that were supposed to contain data were empty.
"There was also a subdistrict in which the number of citizens registered was less than 100. So, we asked regional election commissions to coordinate with the government to fix the data.
"Moreover, the funding to upgrade the data came too late," she added, blaming the government. "We received the funds in July, but the verification process should have started in April."
However, Andi took issue with the notion that the voters list was a disaster. "People say the voters list was messy, but we don't," she said. "We composed the list using the correct procedures."
Government representatives denied the claim that the data provided to the KPU was flawed.
Rasyid Saleh, director general of population administration at the Home Affairs Ministry, said there was nothing wrong with the electronic data they provided and that the KPU's claim about not being able to access voter information on the compact discs was untrue.
"The mistakes were those of the regional KPU officials who could not access the data," he said. "When the CDs were brought back here, we could access the data. Besides, why bother about the voters lists now? "The election is over and [President Susilo Bambang] Yudhoyono has won. This investigation will not change anything."
Gayus Lumbuun, head of the House investigation committee, said that Wednesday's meeting was held to gather information from the relevant agencies. "We just wanted them to give testimonies on the problems related to the voters lists," he said after the meeting.
He said that the purpose of the meeting was not to apportion blame, but to better prepare for the next elections. "It certainly won't change the election results," he said. "But there were people whose rights were violated and we don't want this to happen again in the future."