Anita Rachman – The integrity of the nation's already much-derided regional polling commissions will only get worse if legislators insist on allowing political parties to take part in organizing local elections, watchdogs have warned.
Hadar Gumay, chairman of the Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro), said on Thursday that it was clear that the provincial General Elections Commissions (KPUDs) had "failed to do their job."
He was responding to a report issued on Wednesday by the Elections Supervisory Board (Bawaslu) that highlighted the poor quality of the regional elections this year, with 1,767 reports of polling violations.
Bawaslu blamed the problems squarely on the KPUDs. "It all goes back to the quality of the election organizers – how they prepare for the polls, the regulatory issues and so on," said Nur Hidayat Sardini, Bawaslu's chairman.
Hadar said a proposal by seven of the nine parties at the House of Representatives to allow political party members to serve on KPUDs would only deepen their incompetence.
"Anyone who argues that polling organizers from political parties would perform better compared than nonpartisan organizers is completely wrong," he said.
The proposal is being discussed as part of deliberations for an amendment to the 2007 Election Organizers Law. The Democratic Party, the largest bloc in the House, and the National Mandate Party (PAN) have opposed the proposal's inclusion, while the rest are pushing for it to pass.
However, supporters of the proposal have backpedaled recently, saying they would settle for a clause allowing party members to serve on polling commissions so long as they had resigned from party duties, even if it was just a day earlier.
Under the current law, applicants for seats on the commissions must not have had any party affiliations within the past five years.
Jeirry Sumampouw, from the Independent Committee for Election Monitoring (KIPP), agreed that allowing party members to serve on polling commissions would compromise future elections, even if they had officially resigned.
"The parties will try to get all their former members to serve on the commissions for their own benefit," he said, adding that Bawaslu's report on the issue should be taken seriously by the House.