Some election body candidates have political affiliations: Watchdogs

Tribunnews.comSeveral candidates running for positions in the government’s two election-organizing bodies have “problematic records”, and therefore they must be disqualified to ensure a fair general election in 2014, electoral watchdogs have said.

The watchdogs said four people running for the General Elections Commission (KPU) are affiliated with political parties, while one candidate for the General Elections Monitoring Body (Bawaslu) had reportedly received gratuity from a political party.

“We discovered the problematic records after studying the backgrounds of those candidates from Jan. 10-13,” the People’s Voters Education Association (JPRR) national coordinator Yusfitriadi said on Wednesday.

The review of the candidates’ backgrounds was conducted in 28 provinces. The candidates were screened through curriculum vitae and other document analysis, interviews and media content analysis.

Yusfitriadi said that the group of watchdogs had submitted its investigative findings to the Selection Team, which is tasked with selecting candidates for the KPU and Bawaslu.

The Selection Team completed its final screening process last week, and has short-listed 30 KPU candidates and 18 Bawaslu candidates.

Anies Baswedan, a member of Selection Team and also the rector of Paramadina University, told The Jakarta Post that his team would pay attention to all input submitted from civil society.

He said that in the next phase of the selection process, the team would submit 14 KPU candidates and 10 Bawaslu candidates to the President next Friday for approval.

Once the President has approved the candidates, the candidates will undergo “fit and proper” testing at the House of Representatives, where in the end only seven people will be elected as KPU members and five people for Bawaslu.

The two electoral bodies are considered crucial for the election process because they are tasked with ensuring the general elections run according to the democratic process, and are free of electoral fraud such as vote buying, and disputes.

The last general election in 2009 produced many unresolved electoral disputes such as a document forgery case that implicated KPU chief Abdul Hafiz Anshary and KPU member Andi Nurpati.

However, the group of election watchdogs, including the JPRR, the Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW), the Center for Electoral Reform (CETRO), the Independent Election Supervisory Committee (KIPP), the Society for Election and Democracy (Perludem), and Soegeng Sarjadi Syndicate (SSS) refused to disclose the names of the candidates whose backgrounds were seen as problematic, citing ethical considerations.

Jojo Rohi of the KIPP said that the group would adopt a wait-and-see strategy, and if the problematic names survived the fit and proper test then it would disclose the problematic names.

Aside from the four political-party-affiliated candidates and the candidate implicated in a gratuity case, the watchdog group also said several other candidates lacked crucial knowledge on the election procedure, and others lacked competence or integrity.

The watchdog group’s decision to not reveal the problematic names has raised questions because among the candidates are two who are affiliated with CETRO: Hadar Navis Gumay and Refly Harun.