T

he Jakarta branch of the Independent Elections Monitoring Committee (KIPP) is urging the city Election Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu) to take stern actions against irregularities found in support gathered by gubernatorial independent aspirants.

KIPP Jakarta chairman Wahyudinata said his organization found a number of violations regarding the signatures and citizen ID card copies gathered by the independents in their bid to register for the election.

“These are blatant violations, but we have yet to see strict measures taken against them,” Wahyudinata told a press conference in Central Jakarta on Friday.

Independent political hopefuls are required to gather the signatures and copies of the ID cards of 4 percent of Jakarta’s population, or 407,340 people, to register as candidates.

The Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) is currently verifying a list of 1 million names on the applications submitted by two independent campaigns: economist Faisal Basri and entrepreneur Biem Benjamin; and Maj. Gen. (ret.) Hendardji Soepandji and politician Ahmad Riza Patria.

KIPP Jakarta said that both independent teams had their share of offenses. Among the violations listed by the monitoring body were the submission of fake ID cards, expired ID cards, multiple ID cards of the same person, and non-Jakarta-based ID cards.

The KPU Jakarta two-week-long verification process was started on Feb. 13 with officials deployed to check the signatures and the ID copies with their respective owners in 267 subdistricts.

Subdistrict election committee members are to recheck the documents to prevent double entries, and then personally meet the signatories and verify their support.

Wahyudinata also said that there were also irregularities where the election committee members were unable to find the ID card owners.

“Other cases also included where the officials found the ID card owners, but they denied providing their signature and ID cards to support the independent candidates,” he said.

KIPP Jakarta, however, has yet to publish the list and number of violations they found, saying that the support verification process has not yet been completed.

Separately on Friday, Jakarta Panwaslu chairman Ramdansyah said that the committee had received reports of fraud and other violations allegedly perpetrated by the would-be independent campaigns in garnering support.

“However, it falls under the responsibility of the Jakarta KPU to disqualify the independent aspirants should they be found to have committed such violations,” he said.

He said that faulty support would not be counted and independent pairs failing to reach the minimum requirement would be disqualified.

“The Panwaslu responsibility over the aspirants begins when they have been named as candidates by the Jakarta KPU,” Ramdansyah.