Amid escalating political tension ahead of the April 9
legislative elections, the government has denied allegations that it interfered in the compilation of the East Java registered voters' list, an
issue revealed last week by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).
The government was "paying close attention" to the problem, and assured that
there was no way it could have adjusted the list, Home Affairs Minister
Mardiyanto said after a Cabinet meeting to discuss the issue at the
Presidential Palace on Monday.
"The government submitted all data needed to compile the voters' list to the
General Elections Commission (KPU) on April 5, 2008. Since then, it has been
the responsibility of the KPU to process this list - turning the draft list into
a permanent registered voters' list," Mardiyanto said at a press briefing after
the meeting.
"The government is responsible for ensuring the validity of the data. It has
never intervened with, nor violated the existing regulation in any way," he
said.
The government had authorized the KPU to upgrade the voters' list through the
issuance of a regulation (Temporary Regulation No. 1/2009 on the revision of
the 2008 Law on Legislative Elections), Mardiyanto said.
The government had offered to help the KPU upgrade the list by providing it
with access to additional information from local population agencies, when regional
branches of the commission had requested it, he said.
"The government had no way to intervene with the upgrading of the list, because
this was the KPU's responsibility," the minister said.
Mardiyanto also specifically denied allegations of markups in the voter list,
saying what the KPU had found was a "shrunken" rather than a "marked-up" list.
The government would make sure that the legislative elections
would take place on time, he said.
