Nivell Rayda, Jakarta – Activists said the recently passed revisions to the Regional Election Law will seriously undermine the General Election Commission's independence while others pointed out that the amendments have failed to address some of the issues found in last year's simultaneous regional elections.
The House of Representatives passed the revision bill into law on Thursday, introducing a clause which requires the Commission, known as the KPU, to stage consultation hearings with the legislature before it formulates and establishes technical guidelines for the elections, including deadlines and schedules.
"This is seriously damaging the KPU's independence in staging elections," Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) researcher Fadli Ramadhanil told a discussion on Sunday (05/06) as quoted by Tempo.co.
Veri Junaidi, chairman of the Constitution and Democracy Initiative (Kode) said the KPU must file a judicial review to the Constitutional Court to have the article scrapped and regain its independence. Otherwise, he said, the KPU "will face enormous pressures from candidates."
Masykurudin Hafidz of the People's Voter Education Network (JPPR) said another can of worms which the revision has opened is the verification process for an independent candidate's support.
The new law stipulates that the task of verifying the thousands of support for independent candidates rests on local ballot officials. The law also stipulates that all supports must be verified within 14 days after they were submitted to the KPU.
Although feasible for small towns, ballot officials in cities like Jakarta would have their work cut out for them.
Masykurudin said Jakarta's 267 wards only have an average of three ballot officials each, not enough manpower to verify even the minimum 532,000 signatures each independent candidate must collect before they are qualified to run. "The KPU have no choice but to recruit more manpower. But what about the budget," Masykurudin said.
Kode chairman Veri said there are some positive breakthroughs offered by the new law, one of which is providing more power to the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) to investigate and hear cases of vote buying.
But Indonesia Corruption Watch activist Alma Syafrina said the new law did not prevent the practice of soliciting payoffs from hopefuls in exchange for a party's political support which is often disguised as donations or "registration fees," a practice which has been widely reported recently as political parties vet potential candidates for next year's simultaneous regional elections.