The jakarta Globe, Aug 21, 2014
Jakarta. As Indonesia’s Constitutional Court continued to deliberate on its final verdict on losing candidate Prabowo Subianto’s legal challenge on Thursday, the country’s electoral ethics council said that it would sanction some electoral officers for opening some ballot boxes in violation of regulations.
Joko Widodo was declared the winner of the July 9 presidential election by a margin of 6 percentage points. Prabowo, however, refused to concede and has launched a wide-ranging legal challenge to try and force a rerun of the world’s largest direct election.
In a move that undermined the substance of Prabowo’s complaints of widespread electoral fraud, the council also ordered the dismissal of four local election commissioners for taking bribes from Prabowo’s Great Indonesia Movement (Gerindra) Party.
All 14 other accusations of impropriety on behalf of the General Election Commission (KPU) were thrown out by the Election Organizers Ethical Committee (DKPP).
‘Guilty of an ethical violation’
Prabowo and his running mate Hatta Rajasa filed a complaint to the DKPP saying the commission was guilty of wholesale violations of procedure.
“The defendant was guilty of an ethical violation,” says Valina Singka Subekti, a DKPP member, as quoted by news portal Vivanews.com.
Valina added that the infraction did not warrant termination of KPU commissioners — all seven commissioners will, however, be issued with warnings.
The KPU has been criticized for opening sealed ballot boxes without a court order. On July 9, polling stations across the archipelago opened ballot boxes to count the ballot after voting closed in the afternoon. The boxes were then sealed and sent to the KPU headquarters.
The KPU knew that defeated candidate Prabowo Subianto would challenge the verdict in the Constitutional Court, so they began to prepare their case by opening ballot boxes in order to gather the evidence for the court. This was done before the court gave them the official go-ahead — and Prabowo believes it allowed the vote-counting process to be corrupted.
The court’s chief justice, Hamdan Zoelva, later said the KPU could go ahead and open the ballot boxes.
“We give permission to the defendant to take documents out of sealed ballot boxes so that they may use those as evidence in the trial,” Hamdan said.
The Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) defended the KPU’s move to open the boxes.
Nine local commissioners dismissed
The DKPP also announced that nine local commissioners would be dismissed from the organization for bribery. Four were dismissed for taking bribes from Gerindra in Serang, Banten province. Five others were dismissed for logistical failures that led to a heavily compromised election in Dogiyai district in Papua.
“Nine members have been dismissed, 30 have been warned, and 20 were found not guilty,” DKPP chief Jimly Asshiddiqie said on Thursday, as quoted by Detik.com.
Seven of the nine worked for the local KPU — two worked for the local election supervisory board (Panwaslu).
The DKPP also warned 30 election organizers for procedural violations — including the chief and four members of Jakarta KPU, South Jakarta KPU, North Jakarta KPU, East Jakarta KPU and Central Jakarta KPU, and five from the national KPU.
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do 21 aug 2014 - 22:59