Jakarta – Two people have been arrested for allegedly spreading a video claiming that the General Election Commission's (KPU) computer servers were being manipulated to ensure the victory of the Joko "Jokowi" Widodo-Ma'ruf Amin presidential ticket.
One of the suspects, a woman identified as RD, was a medical school graduate arrested in Lampung. The other, a man identified as EW, was arrested in Ciracas, East Jakarta.
National Police spokesperson Brig. Gen. Dedi Prasetyo said EW had spread the video through Twitter, while RD shared it on Twitter and Facebook. Both suspects also added "provocative" captions to the videos.
Dedi said RD was still being interrogated by the Lampung Police. Despite being a medical school graduate, RD is not a practicing doctor but a homemaker.
"She said that she didn't think [the video] would go viral," Dedi said on Monday as quoted by tempo.co.
The KPU has hit back against the claims in the video, pointing out that vote counting and recapitulation was done manually and that online vote tallies were only used to inform the public about the official manual vote count.
The video is among a number of accusations that have cast doubt on the KPU's independence. Earlier this year, rumors claiming that millions of pre-marked ballots had arrived at the Tanjung Priok Port in North Jakarta also went viral on social media. (kmt)