Govt `ancient population data' root of voter list fiasco

Desy Nurhayati and Yuli Tri Suwarni ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta, Bandung   |  Fri, 03/27/2009 2:14 PM  |  Headlines

The root of the mounting problems surrounding the final voter lists is more about the government's unsystematic voter data rather than the much-debated alleged fraud, a discussion heard here Wednesday.

The voter list inaccuracy would not have occurred if the government had provided accurate and complete data on the population of voters nationwide, said Bambang Eka Cahya Widada, a member of the Elections Supervisory Body (Bawaslu).

"We are not sure whether there are manipulations in the DPT *final voter lists* as alleged by many political parties, but we admit there are errors in the data," he told a discussion held by the Indonesian Parliament Monitoring Society.

"The root of the problem is that government has never updated population data, despite citizens' high mobility. That is why we always encounter problems when it comes to population data."

Bambang added the General Elections Commission (KPU) got into trouble when it started updating the lists last July using initial voter data issued by the Home Ministry.

Before completing the DPT, the KPU published temporary voter lists (DPS).

Bambang said the KPU was apparently muddled with the data because it had amended the data up to three times, even after the deadline for completing the DPT.

The problems worsened as local committees responsible for cross-checking the DPS with the actual conditions in their respective areas could not work properly because of a delay in the disbursement of their budgets by the government.

With less than a month before the polls, allegations of voter list fraud have rocked the political establishment, with reports of hundreds of thousands of fictitious voters unearthed in several East Java regencies' voter lists. Bambang called on municipal elections commissions nationwide to immediately hand over the DPT for their respective areas to municipal branches of political parties, to authenticate the data.

He added local elections committees in villages and districts should also help cross-check the DPT.

In Bandung, West Java, Golkar deputy chairman Agung Laksono demanded the KPU quickly hand over the final voter lists to each party to check with their respective branches down to the village level.

Center for Electoral Reform observer Hadar N. Gumay said all sides should stop trading the blame and start fixing the DPT because time was running out.

"Even though all the problems are unlikely to be settled in the next two weeks, we can still minimize further manipulations at each polling station on voting day," he said.

International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) country director Adam Schmidt said the lack of standardization in data management had made it difficult for the KPU to pinpoint problems in the DPT. To prevent problems in the July presidential poll, he suggested applying two possible mechanisms: provisional balloting, and on-the-day registration using ID cards.

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