Safeguard the 2019 Election’s Legitimacy
JAKARTA, KOMPAS -- The emergence of a number of polemics and hoaxes ahead of the 2019 election threatens the election’s legitimacy.
The 2019 election will determine the quality and future of Indonesia’s democracy consolidation. For this purpose, everyone must work together to safeguard the election’s legitimacy so that everyone can accept the election’s outcome, whatever it may be.
This is highly urgent amid the flurry of controversies and misinformation surrounding the election. This includes controversies regarding the voters’ list, the waterproof cardboard ballot box design and, most recently, the seven containers of marked ballots from China.
General Elections Commission (KPU) member Wahyu Setiawan said in Jakarta on Friday that he was seeing a trend of people trying to delegitimize the election, including by delegitimizing its organizers.
“Those who try to disrupt the election are essentially trying to disrupt the national interest. The general election is an event for all of us and it is everyone’s collective duty to safeguard it,” Wahyu said.
Separately, House of Representatives speaker Bambang Soesatyo said that, despite the information of seven containers of marked ballots having been proven as a hoax, the KPU and the Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) should anticipate potential forgery of ballots. This is important to ensure that the election is honest, fair and not mired with violations.
On the other hand, everyone must restrain themselves from spreading lies or hoaxes. The police must also investigate all hoaxes as they may cause public unrest and potentially undermine the legitimacy of the election and, in turn, democracy itself.
Airlangga University professor of communications Henri Subiakto said the spreading of hoaxes on social media was part of the game of politics. This phenomenon is found not only in Indonesia but also in other countries, such as the United States and Brazil. “There is a tendency that hoaxes are used to attack certain institutions besides rival election candidates. These institutions, including the mass media and election organizers, are attacked in an effort to undermine their legitimacy and gain political support,” Henri said.
Social media observer Nukman Luthfie said these hoaxes should be tackled immediately. “The KPU and Bawaslu should immediately act upon election-related hoaxes. Furthermore, there must be a follow-up from both candidates, namely [Joko Widodo] and Prabowo [Subianto],” he said.
In the long term, hoaxes can be prevented through demanding better regulations from the companies behind the social media platforms. For this purpose, companies like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram must be responsible in acting against accounts with hoax content.
Commitment
Joko Widodo-Ma’ruf Amin national campaign team spokesman Ahmad Basarah said: “If the state tolerates hoax spreaders even for a little bit, let alone done in a systematic and massive way, others will see that it’s okay to do that.”
Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno national campaign team spokesman Andre Rosiade said the team always sought clarifications from election organizers whenever it found data that differed from those of the KPU or the government. He said that when the campaign team found information of 31 million duplicated names in the voters list, it immediately met with the KPU and sought clarification. “In the end, we and the KPU deleted 25 million duplicated names in the voters’ list while the remaining six million names were not found to have duplicates,” he said.
Kompas records show that the Home Ministry once stated there were around 31 million names in the potential voters’ list (DP4) before it was synchronized via the fixed voters’ list (DPTHP). Upon analysis, KPU member Viryan Azis said around six million names were then included in the second DPTHP. The rest were not included for a number of reasons, including that the people had died or did not meet the requirements to vote.
KPU chair Arief Budiman said the KPU would still cross out names in the second DPTHP if it later found that the names were either duplicates or invalid.
The KPU also reaffirmed that the waterproof cardboard ballot boxes to be used in the 2019 election were already used in the 2014 general election and the regional elections in 2015, 2017 and 2018 (Kompas, 20/12/2018).
Two arrested
The National Police’s criminal investigation division has named two suspects related to the spreading of false information about seven containers of millions of marked ballots. The two were identified as HY, arrested in Bogor in West Java, and LS, arrested in Balikpapan in East Kalimantan.
National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Dedi Prasetyo said that HY and LS were suspected to have spread the hoax on social media and several WhatsApp groups.
“They did not verify [the information] but they spread it immediately,” Dedi said. The police are also investigating other parties believed to have been involved in creating and spreading the false information.
Dedi also confirmed that the police did not raid the Lampung home of Democratic Party deputy secretary general Andi Arief. The Bandar Lampung Police visited the house in Kedaton, Bandar Lampung, only after Andi’s statement on Twitter went viral.
On Friday at 11:32 a.m., Andi tweeted that there had been a police raid on his house in Lampung. Soon after, Democratic Party senior executive Rachland Nashidik
asked National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian to explain the incident, in which he said the police tried to take Andi in by force.
Dedi then said there had been no raid. The police had no need to raid Andi’s home as they were still focused on investigating the voice recording on which the marked ballot hoax was reportedly based. (SAN/NTA/MED/INK/REK/GAL)