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lection watchdogs and pro-democracy activists on Thursday called on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to dismiss the seven leaders of the General Elec-tions Commission (KPU) for their poor management of the recent elections.

The presidential decree on the appointment of the seven chairmen should be revoked because it went beyond the 2007 General Elections Commission Law, requiring election organizers to be professional and to have independence and integrity, they said.

The executive director of the Indonesian Civilized Circle (Lima), Ray Rangkuti, told a press conference on Thursday it would be simpler and better for the government to revoke the decree than to review the law, which could take months.

"The public has frequently requested the dismissal of KPU commissioners, but a mechanism for this is not regulated in the 2007 General Election Commission Law. Instead of blaming the House for deliberating the law, we could resort to the person responsible for the elections: The President," Ray said.

"*Yudhoyono* was the one who issued the decree, so he has the authority to revoke it."

The conference was also attended by Wirdyaningsih from the Elections Supervisory Board (Bawaslu), Jeirry Sumampow of Indonesian Election Supervisory Committee (Tepi) and former lawmaker Lena Maryana Mukti of the United Development Party (PPP). Lena was also a member of a special committee that carried out a political investigation into the electoral-roll fraud case.

Lena said before its term ended on Sept. 30, her committee had found that the KPU was unprofessional and had made many violations and mistakes, including in the formation of the flawed electoral roll - which had left up to 49 million people unable to vote in the April 9 legislative election and many more in the Aug. 8 presidential election.

"Based on our findings, all parties in the committee agreed that the KPU commissioners had to be discharged," she said, noting that the parties had not agreed on how many of the commissioners should be removed.

The committee recommended the President issue a regulation in-lieu-of-law (Perppu) to replace the commissioners with more professional individuals.

The House of Representatives is not the only body to have recommended the dismissal of the KPU leadership. Previously, the Constitutional Court also ruled that the KPU was incompetent and unprofessional.

Polls watchdogs and the Elections Supervisory Board (Bawaslu) have several times filed complaints to the National Police on violations in the legislative and presidential elections, but the latter had declined to look into them.

"We reported on our findings to the police but they our documents without even reading them," Wird-yaningsih said, adding that the police recently stopped their investigations into alleged irregularities in presidential campaign funding.

Bawaslu had also tried to report alleged ethical breaches of the commission to the KPU honor council, but the committee had declined to process the reports since most of its members were also part of the KPU.

"The *KPU honor* council is made up of three KPU commissioners and only two people from civil society, so they always that denied any violations had been committed," Lena said.

Lena said the council would only deal with ethical violations committed by individuals.

"But the KPU as an independent institution has made many mistakes and committed numerous violations," she said.

The KPU had failed to take action against those responsible for the electoral roll fraud, and political parties had failed to respond to these violations because of their common interest in securing House seats and their participation in the presidential election, Ray said.

"So I think the best thing now would be for the President to revoke his decree on the appointment of the seven commissioners," Ray said.

"If we have to wait until the law is revised to sack the commissioners, it will be too late because their term will have ended by that stage anyway."