Election Violations

Since our country held its Parliamentary Election on Thursday, 9 April, our news media have been reporting about violation complaints voiced by political parties competing in the said election.

Based on the General Election Law No. 10 Year 2008 Art. 247 Par.4, such kind of complaints should be submitted by those political parties to the General Election Supervision Board (Bawaslu) within three days after the said election date i.e. on Saturday 11 April at midnight (24.00 hours).

According to VivaNews, until 11.40 pm last night, Bawaslu has received at least 549 complaints consisting of 363 Administrative Violations, 75 Criminal Violations, and 111 Miscellaneous Violations. And Lampung is the province with the biggest number of violations i.e. 112 cases.

Further TVOne quoted Wahidah Suaib of Bawaslu as saying that the Administrative Violations consists of among others: Misplacement of Ballots, Voter not registered in the Permanent Voters List (DPT), Unannounced DPT, Ballot’s seal broken. Criminal Violation: Money Politic, Voter cast the ballot more than one time. While Miscellaneous Violation: Chaos or act of Anarchy.
Based on Art. 257 of the General Election Law, Court Verdicts for the Criminal Violation should be passed not less than 5 days before the General Election Commission (KPU) announced the final result of election on 9 May.

According to Kompas, the Head of Bawaslu i.e. Nurhidayat Sardini promised to take immediate action to respond and take legal actions on all complaints received by Bawaslu.

I hope that Bawaslu will settle all the complaints on time i.e. not less than 5 days before KPU make the announcement regarding the final result of Parliamentary Election, so that the KPU will be able to make proper preparations for the Presidential Election on 8 July 2009. That way, KPU would be able to prevent or at least minimized the negative things that happened in the Parliamentary Election.